Orion Magazine

A SA CHILD, I was engrossed by Peanuts, a study of unrequited affections in which we never see the girl Charlie Brown longs for except her silhouette in the distance, necessarily out of reach. “Each of us can imagine what she must look like much bett

THE SWORD FERNS were brown—covered with a layer of dust from the forest floor. I reached down and rubbed a slender frond, revealing the green beneath. The dust coated my sneakers and the dog’s paws. It was unsettling, this rainforest without rain. Ev

UNTIL I VISITED California Carnivores, the largest carnivorous plant nursery in the United States, I didn’t know there was a world of these plants beyond the Venus flytrap. I’d grown up seeing flytraps—with a warning not to touch—in museum gift shops

THE ROMANTIC WOES of captive giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) are legendary. Picture it: the iconic emblem of wildlife conservation in pudgy silhouette, idly munching through a pile of bamboo. Nearby, a frenzied cadre of international match-make

THEIR FACES GLOW in the Manhattan sunlight, all the glorious queens, whether their wigs are hot pink or neon yellow, their eye shadow emerald or sapphire, their chins smooth or bearded. But refocus: Observe that boa they’re holding, all 1.2 miles of

Liza Yeager: I call my sister because I’m not sure about the question. I’m worried about wasting people’s time. When I ask if climate change has impacted her romantic life, she laughs. Then she says that one time she did get ghosted during a wildfire

OUTSIDE IT’S CHILLY, with patches of snow visible on the hills, but it’s steamy in here. The small apartment feels tropical, not only because of the humidity in the kitchen, but also because of the countless houseplants and succulents crowding the bo

WE CALLED IT the desert island game. Arriving at a train station or airport gate, you’d survey your fellow passengers—those with whom you were throwing in your body to hurl through space—and you’d have to choose by the time you boarded. Who would you

IN THE MIDDLE of the Pacific, the black, volcanic ruins of Pinta Island were once dotted by thousands of “living rocks,” Galapágos tortoises chomping prickly cacti, wallowing in mud beneath the equatorial sun, hatching their babies. But the island wa

SOMETIMES THEY LOOK AT EARTH and could be tempted to roll back all they know to be true, and to believe instead that it sits, this planet, at the center of everything. It seems so spectacular, so dignified and regal. They could still be led to believ

IF YOU BELIEVE the legend (and I have no reason to doubt it), in July 2002, Jason Molina—who’d recorded six previous albums under the moniker Songs: Ohia—set up in a Chicago recording studio, where a rotating cast of musical collaborators joined him.

iN THE EARLY 1990s, a young scientific illustrator named John Megahan got a call to work on a secret project: an encyclopedia of all known scientific observations of homosexuality in nature. The book, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and N

LATELY I’ve been using a small, faded red sticky note as a bookmark, moved so far between perhaps seven or eight different volumes, the lightly adhesive edge gradually becoming less and less effective at holding on to anything and instead collecting