FOOD IS A NECESSITY for every living being, but where our food comes from is not considered often enough. With gratitude for the crops that feed us and the people who grow and harvest them, Orion ...

FROM THE PRICE AND PROMISE of a single egg to the life of the chicken who laid it, here are eight stories that reflect upon the world’s most popular bird.

It’s easy to forget this step, but it’s a prerequisite. It’s letting the tears fall for how long you’ve been part of it all, ...

AS THE WEATHER GETS WARMER each year, something unavoidable happens: the insects come back out. While some find the bugs ...

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 ...

ON A MID-AUGUST SUNDAY in that bleak pandemic summer of 2020, the air near central California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park felt muggy, almost tropical. Weird, thought naturalist Christian Schwarz, ...

Maybe we need a different metaphor than “mother tree.” I say this as a mycophile who doesn’t want any of the organisms involved to be given short shrift. I say this because, as a species, we have ...

Four writers reflect on the rhizomatic network of self, society, and ecology ...

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 ...

THE FIRST SOUND IN the universe is joylessly underwhelming: white noise boring through the taffy-stretch of nascent space. The big bang is not a bang but a droning robotic purr, galaxies expanding ...

DAY AND NIGHT, NEW SMOKE is born. The weather has turned warmer, and the lack of rainfall prepares dried-out grasses and shrubs for fire. The burning begins in a few spots—unseen in the mountains—and ...

I first encountered Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass, in the ecology section of my local bookstore. For Orion's Summer 2025 issue, we're celebrating fungus in all forms! Join the ...