Orion May / June & July / August 2014

YEARS AGO, sitting atop a mound of lava on the island of Baltra in the Galápagos, a friend of mine turned to another friend and announced, “I came here to find myself.” “That’s funny,” replied the other friend, “because I came here to lose myself.” Same trip, same island, same rock, two different journeys. That’s the way it is with journeys — they’re all different, and we go on them for all kinds of reasons. Some might be short (in her essay in this issue, Rebecca Solnit reminds us that the word journey originates from the French word for day), and others might be meant to last forever. Some might be about rest and relaxation, and others about adventure, exploration, and even danger. Some journeys are meant to be sacred,…

Gar Alperovitz is the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland and cofounder of the Democracy Collaborative. Stephanie Anderson is a painter and illustrator. Since graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1999, she has illustrated three books for children, all published by Simon & Schuster. Wendell Berry’s most recent book is This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems 1979–2013. The text that appears in this issue of Orion is adapted from the essay “Conservationist and Agrarian,” from Citizenship Papers, published by Counterpoint Press and used by permission. Peter Brewitt is a PhD student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he’s researching ways people restore and remake their environments. His online column, Concrete Progress, is part of Orion’s Reimagining Infrastructure project.…

I’m still deep into reading the January/February 2014 issue of Orion, and I’m enjoying the new department, Lay of the Land. I read all the reports with care, but was especially moved by Sandra Steingraber’s “The Talk-Around.” Good grief, how skillfully she tells us of her husband’s serious strokes. I’ve always respected her writing and her ethics, and I know somehow she will cope. But my heart goes out to her and her husband. Please keep us informed. BARRIE RYANTucson, Arizona I enjoyed Anthony Doerr’s scientifically minded approach to demonstrating our oneness with nature (“The New You,” January/February 2014), and I would tend to agree that the boundary between the human and nonhuman is less clear than we believe. But, that said, I also think science would support the view…

This spring, several Orion pieces garnered notable accolades: Belle Boggs’s essay “The Science of Citizenship” (November/December 2013) won a 2014 Impact Award from The Media Consortium; Amy Glynn Greacen’s poem “Chamise” (September/October 2013) won a Spur Award for Best Western Poem; and Robin Wall Kimmerer won the John Burroughs Nature Essay Award for “Council of the Pecans” (September/October 2013). Congratulations to all. Thank you, readers, for your thoughtful feedback on Orion’s new mission statement earlier this year. To read or add to the discussion, please visit www.orionmagazine.org/mission. Orion’s first annual Poetry Exchange was a huge hit with readers who signed up to create their versions of “Letters from Two Gardens” (January/February 2014). See some of the collaborations at www.orionmagazine.org/poetryexchange, and start sharpening your pencils for next year. From the Department…

1. While the lenders and realtors and brokers circulate their dreary forms, while your only claim to the house is wonder, get the seller to let you till and plant before the closing date. All those buds and shoots will spell welcome in the green language of the garden. 2. Get to know your neighbors. Learn their names, even if you have to look them up: the snowberry brushing against the backside of the outbuilding; a purple finch flitting its shadow across the creek where brook trout scatter; a bushy-tailed woodrat hunched in a corner of the garden shed; stink bugs crammed in every conceivable crevice around every door and window. 3. You won’t like some of your neighbors. That’s natural. Mutual, even. Learn all you can about them, then…

Amelia Blanquera Brooklyn, New York WHEN I MOVED into a large apartment in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, gardening was an experiment. I had enough room for three containers of lettuce: red leaf, butter, and romaine. But later, when I retreated farther into Brooklyn, I missed the plants, so a friend suggested I try my green thumb at the community garden at the end of the block. The Clifton Place Garden sprang up in an abandoned lot in 1991, when activists cleared debris, built raised beds, and brought in dirt, mulch, and good cheer. By the time I joined in 2006, there were a dozen members. We each had an eight-by-four-foot plot. The other gardeners were he neighborhood elders, very few under the age of forty. But that didn’t bother me at…