AFEW YEARS AGO, while living on the Diné Nation, I first heard a striking proclamation that rang through the community with profound urgency: “Tó éí íín´á!”—“water is life.” I saw these words in bold ...

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 ...

A PHOTO OF A REDWOOD’S muscular, six-hundred-year-old base. To the left a fun-sized woman, in the Bay Area only briefly and wanting to make the most of it, trying to hug the tree’s ancient girth. She ...

THE CHICKEN WAS UNWELL. She no longer ran to the summons of the leftovers pail to scratch at the compost heap with the other hens. Morning found her in a corner of the henhouse facing the wall, with ...

adrienne maree brown has been on my radar for a while. As a thinker, activist, and teacher, she provides essential insights into how we relate to both human and natural ecosystems. Our conversation ...

Introduction: Narratively speaking, environmental crises tend to fall into one of two classes. The first—call it type A—includes Love Canal, Bhopal, and DuPont’s mass production of forever chemicals.

I first encountered Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass, in the ecology section of my local bookstore. For Orion's Autumn 2025 issue, we're exploring the sonic landscapes of hip-hop! Join ...

I OWE MY CAREER to Robert Redford. The list of people who can say that is long, but not many of those work at environmental organizations. I first met Bob in fall 2003 at the dedication of The Robert ...

THE CHINESE CHARACTER for silkworm (蚕) is composed of the symbol for sky (天) and the symbol for worm (虫). They are heavenly worms. China’s Sichuan Province, a damp, landlocked corner east of the ...

IN OUR FREE TIME, WE DESTROY TREES. Hundreds of them by now. Five years ago, soon after I bought the place, I gave my partner a Husqvarna 450 Rancher for Christmas. Since then, he’s had to replace the ...

Retreat in the Arctic Circle, watercolor and colored pencil, 2023. Based on research by William Kochtitzky, a gradient in the map shows the degree of ice loss in the Arctic Circle, and a stacked bar ...

THE HISTORY OF the plastic carrier bag—the kind so often found caught on a tree branch and flagging in the wind—is a story of persuasion. But in the United States, the paper grocery bag proved far ...