Marcia Bonta

  • The Gifts of May

    The Gifts of May

    Spring is my favorite season and May my favorite month. To me, beginnings are always more thrilling than endings and comings more wonderful than goings as I experience all the excitement of new and resurrecting life—the returning of birds, the blooming of wildflowers, trees and shrubs, and the newborn fawns, bear cubs, and other mammals.…

  • Living with Bears Redux

    Living with Bears Redux

    Most summer evenings after the heat of the day has faded, I walk Butterfly Loop. This trail encircles a portion of our 37-acre meadow we call First Field. Often I’m treated to a stunning sunset, and always I hear and see songbirds that prefer a meadow of forbs or the edge of a wooded ridge.…

  • Tracking Snow

    Most Januarys it is cold and light snows fall which make ideal tracking weather. Only then do we discover, for instance, that we have fishers on our mountain property. Last winter, in mid-January, it was a relatively balmy 16 degrees Fahrenheit, after days below zero or in the single digits, although three days before, it…

  • Living with Bears

    Over the years I have had numerous close encounters with black bears, and not once have I felt threatened. That is as it should be according to black bear researcher Benjamin Kilham. He has been studying black bears in the field and raising orphaned cubs at the behest of the New Hampshire Fish and Game…

  • Vernal Pond Adventures

    Once again I’m sitting beside our mountaintop vernal pond and wondering if this will be the year the wood frogs will make it out of the pond before the water disappears. A wood frog’s life span is about seven years, and for six years the pond has dried up before the wood frogs’ have fully…

  • What About Bears?

    Next to poisonous snakes, people fear encountering bears in the outdoors.  Even some of our hunter friends are bear-shy. But ever since black bears returned to our mountain, back in the 1980s, I’ve relished every experience I’ve had with them.  So far, they’ve been exciting but harmless. Last spring and summer, I saw more bears…

  • Mountain Meadows

    Imagine receiving a gift of 113 acres on Tussey Mountain.  That’s what happened to Mike and Laura Jackson back in 1988 when Laura’s parents, Richard and Phyllis Hershberger, gave them a portion of their farm.  The Jacksons named their property Mountain Meadows and built a home with large windows for wildlife viewing. Part of the…