Tom Wessels

A provocative critique of Western progress from a scientific perspective.

Toward a Sustainable Future

The Myth of Progress

Step Out of Your Car and Right into Nature! New England’s Roadside Ecology guides you through 30 spectacular natural sites, all within an easy walk from the road. The sites include the forests, wetlands, alpines, dunes, and geologic ecosystems that make up New England. Author Tom Wessels is the perfect guide. Each entry starts with the brief description of the hike's level of difficulty—all are gentle to moderate and cover no more than two miles. Entries also include turn-by-turn directions and clear descriptions of the flora, fauna, and fungi you are likely to encounter along the way. New England’s Roadside Ecology is a must-have guide for outdoor enthusiasts, hikers, and tourists in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Explore 30 of the Region's Unique Natural Areas

New England's Roadside Ecology

Chronicles the forest in New England from the Ice Age to current challenges

A Natural History of New England

Reading the Forested Landscape

New England’s preeminent ecologist reveals 30 landscapes of spectacular natural beauty that are easily accessible from nearby roadsides.

Clare Walker Leslie

John Tallmadge

Provides curriculum ideas for engaging students in the natural and cultural history of their communities.

A Guide to Locally Focused Teaching

Into the Field

A. Blake Gardner

A fresh and innovative look at the remote and remarkable wild areas in one tiny New England state.

Extraordinary Wilderness Areas of the Green Mountain State

Untamed Vermont

Chronicles and illustrates the natural history of North America's granite summits, introducing the origins of granite domes and mountains in Yosemite National Park, New York's Adirondack Mountains, and Maine's Acadia National Park.

A Natural History of America's Mountain Domes, from Acadia to Yosemite

Granite Landscape

This is a field guide that residents and visitors, landowners and foresters, students and hikers, and anyone who walks in the woods of the Northeast can use to discern the history of virtually any piece of land. What is the evidence: Are trees old or young? Are they standing or have they fallen? Did they snap mid-trunk or tip up with their roots? What is the human footprint on the land - stone walls, open fields - and how has it influenced the landscape? If you ever come across a place so unique, so damaged, or so lovely that it made you wonder how it arrived at that state and what it looked like a hundred years ago, you've finally go the key to deciphering that mystery in Forest Forensics.

A Field Guide to Reading the Forested Landscape

Forest Forensics

Acadia National Park, on Maine's Mount Desert Island, is among the most popular national parks in the United States. From the road, visitors can experience magnificent vistas of summit and sea, but on a more intimate scale, equally compelling views abound along Acadia's hiking trails. Tom Wessels, an ecologist, naturalist, and avid hiker, attributes the park's popularity-and its unusual beauty-to the unique way in which earth, air, fire, and water-in the form of glacially scoured granite, winter winds, fire, and ocean fog-have converged to create a landscape that can be found nowhere else. In this beautifully illustrated book, Wessels invites readers to investigate the remarkable natural history of Mount Desert Island, along with the unique cultural story it gave rise to. This account of nature, terrain, and human interaction with the landscape will delight those who like to hike these bald summits, ride along the carriage roads, or explore the island's rugged shoreline. Wessels concludes with a guided tour of one of his favorite hikes, a ten-mile loop that will acquaint the reader with the diverse ecosystems described throughout his book.

The Natural and Cultural History of Acadia

Granite, Fire, and Fog

A provocative critique of Western progress from a scientific perspective

Take some of the mystery out of a walk in the woods with this new field guide from the author of Reading the Forested Landscape. Thousands of readers have had their experience of being in a forest changed forever by reading Tom Wessels's Reading the Forested Landscape. Was this forest once farmland? Was it logged in the past? Was there ever a major catastrophe like a fire or a wind storm that brought trees down? Now Wessels takes that wonderful ability to discern much of the history of the forest from visual clues and boils it all down to a manageable field guide that you can take out to the woods and use to start playing forest detective yourself. Wessels has created a key—a fascinating series of either/or questions—to guide you through the process of analyzing what you see. You’ll feel like a woodland Sherlock Holmes. No walk in the woods will ever be the same.

Tom Wessels

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