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 ...

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

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 ...

THE FIRST THINGS I SEE are the tails of the planes. They jut like hundreds of dorsal fins rising from prehistoric fish that have been lined up by a butcher on a massive table of thin brown grass. It ...

ON THE FISHCAMP SPIT of Nuvurak, in 1974, Bob Uhl taught me how to make rice. “Four cups of water.” He paused and thought for moment. “One cup of rice.” He was wearing hip boots, stacking salmon net ...

TERESA AVIÑA won’t open the windows or door of her small apartment, despite a heat that plagues the soul. On the kitchen table, beside two jugs of bottled water, a small, green, electric fan pushes ...

WHEN THREE-YEAR-OLD Becky Furmann got the “poopies” and became dehydrated, her doctor urged her to drink water. He didn’t know that water had caused the rare illness that would kill her. As the chubby ...

THERE IS COLOR IN THE LAND AGAIN. OR PERHAPS the color was always there, like a pigment in the soil, but was simply rendered imperceptible for a while. But not for long. Not all that much separated ...

I HAVE COME to believe that extracting natural gas from shale using the newish technique called hydrofracking is the environmental issue of our time. And I think you should, too. Saying so represents ...