Life on Sonsorol revolves around the reefs, and the children’s play teaches them many important skills.  Viewed from ...

The term limit implies a boundary that cannot be breached, but deep in its etymology, the word bends and bows. The restriction relents. The furthest point opens and ushers us into something new. In ...

Photographer and National Geographic Explorer Kiliii Yüyan brings to life stories from the Arctic sea ice, beneath the waves, ...

I SEE HIM CLOAKED in cold mist, the Fisher King, a desolate figure in a wasteland of his own making. He hunches silently over his fishing rod in a sea of silence, catching nothing except the ...

IT’S SPRING WHEN I REALIZE that I may never have children, and around that time the thirteen-year cicadas return, burrowing out of neat, round holes in the ground to shed their larval shells, sprout ...

LAKE SUPERIOR ON A CALM DAY has a depth clarity of over a hundred feet. In shallow waters, boulders appear to be just below the surface. Near shore, trash creates a timeline of occupation: plates, ...

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 ...

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 ...

IF A PARENT WORRIES FOR THEIR CHILD, what do the childless worry about? This is not a question that has been put to me yet, but it is one that I have imagined a few times. Every time you hear of a ...

“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 ...

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 ...

IN THE FALL OF 1941, as the Nazis invaded Russia, choking trade routes into Leningrad and starving the city’s population, a group of botanists decided to not allow the world to end. They were ...