Our first book in the series is: We Took to the Woods by Louise Dickinson Rich. This lovely memoir of life in a remote backcountry settlement in the Rangeley, Maine area is absolutely charming. The book was published in 1942, and I read it in 1999. It resonated with my roots as a multi-generational Mainer, and a woman of the woods.
Pollinators are in significant decline due to a combination of factors including loss of habitat, disease, parasites, and environmental contaminants. However, honey bees have received most of the attention. Our domesticated honey bees pollinate many of our crops and provide valuable honey, but they are not native here. They were brought over from Europe about four hundred years ago and their numbers are vast (almost 3 million hives in the U.S. alone). We have over 4,000 species of native bees in North America that have co-evolved with our native plants over millions of years, many of which are experiencing catastrophic declines.
