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 ...

HE IS HUNCHED DOWN feeding on the carcass of a newly dead bison by the northeast shore of Yellowstone Lake. He eats methodically, gratefully, his muzzle smeared with blood, his forearms and ruff ...

Ellen Wayland-Smith: You describe your book at one point as “a bridge between words—poetry—and the land, which have always been my two primal loves.” This question of language, and how to listen to/be ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

“WHAT THE THIEF STOLE will always be expensive,” says Tāmati Kruger. He faces a large window in his tribe’s local marae, a community meeting house, as he speaks. His words are matter-of-fact. They ...

BEFORE THE APPOINTMENT, my sister slipped the doctor a note with a list of our concerns. Our dad was forgetting words, wasn’t walking well, had difficulty communicating, was struggling to use ...