We use cookies to improve our services and remember your choices for future visits. For more information see our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Independent, Reader-Supported Publishing
Browse Topics
Plants
The Dog-Eared Page
The Meadow Across The Creek
The difficulty is that with the rise of the modern sciences we began to think of the universe as a collection of objects rather than a communion of subjects.
September 2009Poetry
History
Rough birds / fit this field, / starlings and crows, / their blue-black wings / against the sheen / of the week-old snow / and the metallic / stubble of corn.
September 2009The Sun Interview
Going Underground
Paul Stamets On The Vast, Intelligent Network Beneath Our Feet
A mycelial “mat,” which scientists think of as one entity, can be thousands of acres in size. The largest organism in the world is a mycelial mat in eastern Oregon that covers 2,200 acres and is more than two thousand years old. Its survival strategy is somewhat mysterious. We have five or six layers of skin to protect us from infection; the mycelium has one cell wall. How is it that this vast mycelial network, which is surrounded by hundreds of millions of microbes all trying to eat it, is protected by one cell wall? I believe it’s because the mycelium is in constant biochemical communication with its ecosystem.
February 2008
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Shade
A Letter From Gettysburg
I didn’t learn about the tree-cutting program at Gettysburg National Military Park until I saw early evidence of its implementation. Just north of the hill known as Little Round Top, more than a hundred large trees — maples, oaks, tulip trees, mulberries, magnolias, cedars, hickories, and ash — were felled and hauled away in a matter of weeks.
May 2007
Poetry
Saddam Hussein Is Writing Poetry In Solitary Confinement
I laughed when I told my friend: / Saddam is writing poems! / No matter how down and out you are, there’s always / poetry! I snorted. / When the last rotten plank / in the basement of your mind has fallen through, / pray that a thin lifeline of words may sustain you.
December 2006Poetry
Walking In An Old Forest With Our Young Son On My Back, I See The Fates Of My Friends In Every Tree
Little one, do you see how this thin tree grows in the shade / of its father? Don’t do that. Do you see how this trunk / turns around, always looking over its shoulder at the others? / That’s hard.
July 2006
Subscribe & SaveSAVE 52%
Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
Subscribe Today