A WOODCHUCK IS WOOLLY. Who knows what he thinks? He hibernates in his underground lair, a groundhog by any other name, his tail not quite reaching his nose. He slumbers all winter there, living off ...

But, if you’re feeling like you could use some more quiet tenderness in your life and reading (who doesn’t these days?), try ...

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

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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

BIGFOOT ISN’T REAL, but black bears are—that’s the subtext of a recent study by Dr. Floe Foxon mapping bear populations relative to cryptid sightings. That study, published in 2024, sparked my ...

THE MUSHROOM BURIAL SHROUD that covered Luke Perry’s face and famous forehead was black as night, or perhaps it was white as bone, made of organic cotton, and inlaid with white crochet tubes that ...

A CEMETERY SEEMED AN ODD PLACE to contemplate the boundaries of being. Sandwiched between the campus and the interstate, this old burial ground is our cherished slice of nearby nature where the long ...

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 ...

HEAT WAVES SHIMMER above the grasses, the air heavy and white and ringing with the buzz of cicadas. The boys have been shoeless all summer long, but even so the dry September stubble of 1895 pricks ...

March is Women’s History Month, and we’re back with another curated list of poetry recommendations from Orion poetry editor Camille Dungy and friends. From Trinidad to Kabul to the Arctic and beyond, ...