On the ground, my encounters with the habituated mother bear of yearling cubs were becoming increasingly tense. We were both ...

Writer, naturalist, whale watcher, and longtime Orion contributor Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of several books of poetry, including Toward Antarctica, Approaching Ice, and m ...

While we the living, not sleeping, move through days of snow and cloud, rain and fog, the willow stems lie dormant, perhaps dreaming, or perhaps only sleeping. Listening to the rill of the river ...

I DROVE DOWN WASHINGTON TURNPIKE, a straight sandy road cutting through the pine country of Wharton State Forest, the largest tract of wilderness in New Jersey. Surrounding me were trunks of slash ...

As I look back on a topsy-turvy 2025, while testing out my new year’s mantra – radical optimism – I’m grateful for the chance to share with you, our community, some personal thoughts and exciting ...

Belabored breath. Hesitation. My companions, sitting across the small table in an empty seaside café, are unable to say no. The wind howls, and we clutch our coffee cups. Out the window, a misted bog ...

DEEP IN THE FORESTS of the southern coastal plains are places where trees rise up straight out of the ground, sometimes one hundred feet, their branches splayed all near the crown in a wide, high ...

AFTER ABOUT A YEAR AND A HALF of dating, Sam and I decided he should move into my house. We had each lived with partners before, but those moves had been swayed by financial stress and global ...

RICK HANEY, GANGLY AND GARRULOUS, paces in front of a congregation of government conservationists, working the room for laughs before he gets to the hard data. The U.S. Department of Agriculture soil ...