Orion March / April 2012

IN “BUFFALO EDDY,” an essay found on page 42 of this issue, Scott Russell Sanders describes petroglyphs he finds while hiking in the hills around the Snake River in the state of Washington. These enigmatic drawings, made by native peoples as many as four thousand years ago, are of animals and humans, as well as of creatures that seem to be both animal and human. They are from a time, Sanders writes, “before humans and other living tribes drifted apart.” The lives of the people who made these drawings were difficult and brutal. They did not have any of the contemporary technology and science that make our lives convenient and comfortable, and even entertaining. They lived with unpredictability as to what hardships the next season would bring and which enemy…

Belle Boggs is the author of the story collection Mattaponi Queen. She lives and teaches in North Carolina. Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of Approaching Ice and Interpretive Work. She lives on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts. Paul Colangelo is a member of the International League of Conservation Photographers. His work has appeared widely. Jon Cornforth’s photographs of the natural world have been published internationally. He lives with his family in Seattle. Wade Davis, an explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, is the 2011 recipient of the Explorers Medal. He is the author, most recently, of Into the Silence. Mariah Doren’s and Johanna Paas’s collaborative artwork was recently exhibited at the Center for Photography in Woodstock, New York. Doren teaches at Parsons in New York City; Paas teaches at Central Michigan…

Francesco Zizola’s photographs of the Jordan River (“Holy Water,” November/December 2011) do an excellent job of illustrating the issues surrounding water scarcity in the Levant, although they probably understate their political significance. I lived in Jordan and am familiar with Friends of the Earth Middle East’s efforts to manage water responsibly; the fact that they’re the only environmental group to work with Jordan, Palestine, and Israel has caused them some difficulty in obtaining funding (respective governments and sponsors are often unwilling to support them for working with one side or the other). Still, it’s clear that access to clean water will only become more important as the struggle for regional stability continues. LINDSEY LEGER Rochester, New York Francesco Zizola and Stephan Faris are right to point out the problems caused…

The Orion-produced short film eel*water*rock*man was shown at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City, California, in January. Picture Editor Jason Houston attended and participated in a panel about directions in new media. Editor Jennifer Sahn and Associate Editor Hannah Fries attended the annual conference of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs in Chicago, February 29 − March 3. Jennifer hosted a reading celebrating Orion’s thirtieth anniversary, and Hannah moderated a panel of Orion poets. Orion is proud to participate in the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers, here in Massachusetts, by cohosting an event with the food magazine Gastronomica in March and hosting a poetry reading in April. Two Orion features, “The Gulf Between Us,” by Terry Tempest Williams, and “Spectral Light,” by Amy Irvine McHarg, were…

Abigail Greenbaum Oxford, Mississippi BY NOW, my third year here, I know that spring in northern Mississippi brings crows rioting in the bamboo behind my cottage, February paperwhites, and tornado watches. In the northern places where I lived before, spring was a season of gentleness and permission. We went hatless, inhaled without fear. But in Mississippi, spring reminds me that sometimes all I can do is take shelter, wait it out. Funnel clouds are not the only source of hill-country danger. When a black widow bit my student, her skin swelled up into a mounded edema, spongy and thick. When she pressed a finger in, the print remained in her skin for maybe half an hour. Living here, I have learned to shake out my boots. When I go running…

LAST NOVEMBER, tens of thousands of people across the continent who had rallied to block the Keystone XL pipeline scored a modest but real victory when President Obama sent the project back for more review. We’d gone to jail, marched, lobbied, even circled the White House with bodies. It felt good to win, though we reminded ourselves that there are no final victories in our business — a point underscored in the weeks that followed, as Big Oil unleashed its fleet of congressmen to try and ram the pipeline down the nation’s throat. The point was underscored more subtly on November 9, when the International Energy Agency announced a record annual increase in the amount of carbon humans had poured into the atmosphere; even without Alberta’s giant tar sands in…