Orion January / February 2014

WHEN WE THINK about why we strive to preserve nature, many of us begin by framing our answers in terms of security and wellbeing — because pollution compromises our health, because extinction destabilizes the natural systems on which we depend, because unsustainable resource extraction creates uncertainty for future generations, because climate change makes the world too hot and unpredictable. Or perhaps we frame our reasons in terms of ethics — because destroying the world and its creatures is immoral, selfish, and wrong. All of that is, of course, correct. But British journalist George Monbiot offers a different starting point for a conversation about how people benefit from an intact world: the effect it has on the human psyche. “My sense,” he says on page 18 of this issue of Orion,…

Nico Alvarado is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His recent poetry and prose can be found in Gigantic and Gulf Coast. Emily Blincoe is a freelance photographer from Austin, Texas. She specializes in portrait, landscape, and concept photography and enjoys working with color and natural light. Peter Brewitt is a PhD student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he’s researching the ways people restore and remake their environments. His online column, Concrete Progress, is a part of Orion’s two-year Reimagining Infra structure project. Craig Childs has written several acclaimed books on nature, science, and wilderness travel. His most recent book, Apocalyptic Planet: Field Guide to the Everending Earth, won the 2013 Orion Book Award. He lives in western Colorado. Andrea Cohen’s fourth poetry collection, Furs Not…

I’ve been a registered nurse for thirtythree years, and Jennifer Lunden’s September/October 2013 article, “Exposed,” confirms my already stalwart belief that if we don’t get big business out of health care, we will continue to make little headway in our quest to reduce human suffering. Health-care profiteering and appropriate medical management are morally and practically opposed to one another. Prevention takes away from the bottom line, as do non-invasive treatments or a “wait and see” approach — and when doctors are forced to see twenty or more patients a day, there is no time to discuss the meaningful diet and lifestyle changes that are the only lasting cures for many of our modern illnesses. Of course, even if there were time for this, and insurance companies were willing to reimburse…

First of all, a thank-you to the many readers who supported Orion during 2013 with donations, renewals, and gift subscriptions. You’re the reason this magazine exists, and we don’t just mean financially. Readers’ connections to Orion and the stories you share are our inspiration five days a week (and sometimes six or seven). And it’s always a great time to make a gift; please visit www.orionmagazine.org/donate to support Orion’s mission to publish writing and art that deepens our connection with the natural world. Congratulations to Jill Sisson Quinn (“Metamorphic,” May/June 2013), who has won a 2013 Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award. And congratulations also to Karen Russell on being awarded a MacArthur “genius grant.” Her book Swamplandia! was a finalist for the 2012 Orion Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in…

1. The Floating Trumpet Imagine Louis Armstrong with lungs the size of a Volkswagen and a trumpet the size of a hollow cedar tree. Now imagine Louis pouring every hour of practice, every smoky-hall performance, every ounce of his huge soul into a single pure note set free over a mirror-calm sea. That’s the sound that occasionally lifts from the nose of a humpback whale on a late summer evening. Hear it once and it will long echo against the walls of memory. 2. The Wave of Whispers Barnacles, those crusted critters clustered on intertidal rocks, are, at first listen, not the most vocal of species. But pass the shadow of your body over a low-tide boulder on a still morning and you’ll hear a wave of whispers, all those…

Ron Cammel Canton, Ohio FORTYISH YEARS AGO I made good use of summers in the city park behind my house. I grumble now at the expanses of lawn and lack of wild areas, but as a kid I explored the creeks, pond, and wooded hills, and climbed the trees I fancied as spaceship, horse, or telephone booth. Every season gave the park new meaning, every flood created a new playground. And every year I chewed the peppermint leaves that grew along the streams. Today I visit the peppermint with nieces and nephews. Two of them partake eagerly, one reluctantly. Two flat-out refuse, and one worries about hurting the plants or being poisoned but finally chews and spits out a leaf. Later, we watch blimps hover over the Pro Football Hall…