Dickerson creates stories inside and outside the classroom

There aren’t a lot of similarities between Matthew Dickerson’s work as a computer science professor at Middlebury College and his literary endeavors as a published author. 

Vermonters may have woken up on June 6, 1912, thinking it was a normal day.

There is something magical about sitting atop a ledge looking out over a lake, river, canyon or even just a swath of undeveloped landscape.

“People learn best when information enters through their peripheral vision, out of the corner of their eye … through stories.” 

I will admit that it’s a bleak Monday morning. Between the rain and the low clouds, I can barely see the hills a half mile from my house. The nearby cornfield looks like one vast puddle.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been doing the sitting-in-the-woods-waiting-for-large-game-to-pass sort of waiting.

I’ve been spending a fair bit of time in the woods lately in my annual attempt to harvest local free-range, antibiotic-free venison.

“It was comparable to Tropical Storm Irene. We lost a lot (though not all) of the young-of-year age class.” Austin Galinat, a fisheries scientist with Vermont Fish and Wildlife, was giving me an overview of some of the results of the late summer and early … (read more)

The number of bears I have seen this year — and seen evidence of around my house — gives testimony to our vibrant and growing black bear population.

Sometime — likely between 3,000 and 2,500 years ago — a Hebrew poet wrote a beautiful nature poem that has, thankfully, managed to survive the centuries, and has come to modern readers as Psalm 104. I say “thankfully” because for many years this ancient p … (read more)

The rain was falling again. Alaska’s 2023 summer was beginning to feel a lot like Vermont’s.

I never have — and with complete confidence can say I never will — be seen “Dancing with the Stars.” As for dancing with the bears, however, that’s another story.

My wife recently pointed out to me that there are 45 known species of mosquitos in Vermont. This summer I think I have interacted with all of them.

River after river, stream after stream was running high and muddy. Unfishably muddy.

Thanks in large part to the public’s purchases of Vermont Habitat Stamps, the Blake Higgins Dam on Vermont’s Saxtons River — a tributary of the Connecticut River in southeastern Vermont — is scheduled to be taken down in 2024.