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 ...

PEOPLE HAVE BEEN eating mushrooms for at least twelve thousand years, according to the fungal micro-remains found in Paleolithic dental samples in a mountain cave in Eastern Spain. Yet the idea of ...

MY CONVERSATION WITH ARTURO would happen after I returned home, but on the last weekend of my Oregon trip, I buckled into Joe’s gray Toyota Tacoma truck as he drove us out to Mount Pisgah Arboretum.

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 ...

Corey Pressman: My question to you all to get started is why fungi, and why now? Merlin Sheldrake: I think there are a few reasons why we’re seeing a surge of interest in fungi right now. One is that ...

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 FACT THAT I have never been a skilled singer has never kept me from karaoke. In adolescence, I was a part-time theater kid, a past that left me with a simmering, unquenched desire for some kind of ...

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 ...

JO: I sometimes feel that in an individualistic culture, people get freaked out by the idea of being tied down or responsible for anything. Thinking about a gift economy, they might say, “I want the ...