Writer, naturalist, whale watcher, and longtime Orion contributor Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of several books of ...

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 ...

I DROVE DOWN WASHINGTON TURNPIKE, a straight sandy road cutting through the pine country of Wharton State Forest, the largest tract of wilderness in New Jersey. Surrounding me were trunks of slash ...

BRENDAN AND I wouldn’t ever speak directly about our estrangement. There were some topics we’d learned to avoid entirely to “keep the peace,” as my mother would say. I bit my tongue when the topic of ...

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 ...

Belabored breath. Hesitation. My companions, sitting across the small table in an empty seaside café, are unable to say no. The wind howls, and we clutch our coffee cups. Out the window, a misted bog ...

DEEP IN THE FORESTS of the southern coastal plains are places where trees rise up straight out of the ground, sometimes one hundred feet, their branches splayed all near the crown in a wide, high ...

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 ...

EARLY IN 2004, a buoy was released into the waters off Argentina. Half of the buoy was dark and the other light, like a planet in relief. The buoy sailed east, accompanied by the vastness of the ocean ...

IT IS SPRING IN HOUSTON, which means that each day the temperature rises and so does the humidity. The bricks of my house sweat. In my yard the damp air condenses on the leaves of the crepe myrtle ...

A CATFISH WITH THREE EYES lived in the Gowanus Canal. I can say this with confidence because I have seen the evidence. The catfish was shiny and pitch-dark. After a fisherman hooked it and reeled it ...

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 ...