Yet we have constricted ourselves to accept architecture that disconnects us from our environment and that is dictated by ...

PART OF THE BEAUTY of spring and summer come from cthe flowers which bloom around us. They come in many shapes, sizes, and ...

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

World Without End is for those allergic to polemics, those who love the Southern lilt of Margaret Renkl and the ...

“The mushroom pushes against boundaries,” writes Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, “and in doing so, it creates an opening.” So often, when humans look at mushrooms, we’re apt to see solutions—a cure, a trip, a ...

MY TWO-WEEK VISIT WAS bookended by a pair of annual mushroom festivals, scheduled to align with what was supposed to be peak mushroom season. At the beginning of my trip was the Yachats Mushroom ...

I MET ELAN HAGENS at a Coast Range trailhead about thirty minutes from the Tillamook Cheese Factory. I grew up hiking and backpacking in Oregon, but I’d never gone into the woods with a specifically ...

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 ...

(This essay was a finalist for a 2010 National Magazine Award in the Essay category.) OUT ON THE BIG DRY we had to kill to live: Come October, we’d herd a yearling lamb into the west pen, throw it ...

A VILLA MISERIA OUTSIDE Buenos Aires may have the worst feng shui in the world: it is built in a flood zone over a former lake, a toxic dump, and a cemetery. Then there’s the barrio perched ...

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 ...

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.. For over a century, the paper bag held dominion over how ...