A WOODCHUCK IS WOOLLY. Who knows what he thinks? He hibernates in his underground lair, a groundhog by any other name, his ...

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

THE GUITAR LINE UNFURLS with a kinetic, pulsing energy. Soft moans hover over the riff, both spooky and sensual. Then the synth slides in, drums steady the beat, and the song swells with the promise ...

I WAS TAUGHT, AS A SCIENTIST, to think logically and empirically, rather than intuitively or spiritually.When I was at Cambridge University in the early 1960s most of the scientists and science ...

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 ...

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 ...

THE FIRST SOUND IN the universe is joylessly underwhelming: white noise boring through the taffy-stretch of nascent space. The big bang is not a bang but a droning robotic purr, galaxies expanding ...

I first encountered Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass, in the ecology section of my local bookstore. For Orion's Winter 2025/26 issue, we're chasing elusive cryptids and grappling with ...

THE CHINESE CHARACTER for silkworm (蚕) is composed of the symbol for sky (天) and the symbol for worm (虫). They are heavenly worms. China’s Sichuan Province, a damp, landlocked corner east of the ...

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 ...