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Reviews.
 

A Conservationist Manifesto, by Scott Russell Sanders, reviewed by Simmons B. Buntin

Simmons B. Buntin reviews A Conservationist Manifesto, by Scott Russell Sanders

  
  
The Trouble with Black Boys and Other Reflections on Race, Equity, and the Future of Public Education by Pedro A. Noguera, reviewed by Heather Killelea McEntarfer

Heather Killelea McEntarfer reviews The Trouble with Black Boys and Other Reflections on Race, Equity, and the Future of Public Education by Pedro A. Noguera

  
  
Unexpected Light, poems by C. E. Chaffin, reviewed by Kim Barke

Kim Barke reviews Unexpected Light, poems by C. E. Chaffin

  
  
Crazy Love, new poems by Pamela Uschuk, reviewed by Terrain.org

Terrain.org staff reviews
Crazy Love: New Poems, by Pamela Uschuk

 
  

 
    
  
 
     
    
  
 
Guest Editorial & Columns.
Solar is the Bridge to Our Future, by U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords Solar is the Bridge to Our Future
by Gabrielle Giffords, U.S. Representative, Arizona's 8th Congressional District
"Just as oil was a passport to wealth in the 20th century, I believe the sun will be a gateway to prosperity in the 21st. But what would it take for solar to really become a major power source in the United States? Last year, the U.S. Department of Energy issued a report outlining how we could generate 20 percent of our power from wind by 2030. What if we were to adopt a comparable target for solar? What would it take to achieve that?"

Simmons B. Buntin's The Literal Landscape: "My Neighbor's Bird"
Deborah Fries' Plein Air: "Mapping Mary Ann Armstrong"
David Rothenberg's Bull Hill: "The Road That Must Be Taken" with Online Image Gallery of Northern Forests
Lauret Savoy's A Stone's Throw: "The View from Point Sublime"

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Poetry.

Poetry Features

Other Poetry

Articles.

To Wit, to Woo: The Silence of Owls
by Kathryn Miles

To Wit, to Woo: The Silence of Owls, by Kathryn MilesPerhaps the most unsettling truth of all is that no one knows for certain. While we may love that which is unknowable about owls in story, most ornithologists say that mystery can be frustrating as hell when it comes to science. What little they do know is that the diurnal appearance of an owl usually indicates the bird is food-stressed.

 
Ken Wu and the Fight for Canada's Remaining Pacific Coast Old-Growth, with Online Slideshow
Text by Joan Maloof
Photography by Rick Maloof

Ken Wu and the Fight for Canada's Remaining Pacific Coast Old-Growth, with Online Slideshow, by Joan and Rick Maloof

Are photographs useful in the struggle to preserve beauty and diversity in the natural world? Consider the story of Ken Wu. When Wu was a young boy in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, his parents bought him The Illustrated Natural History of Canada book series. In the Pacific Coast edition Wu found a photograph that fascinated him. It was an old black-and-white photo from the Public Archives of Canada showing four couples, in the old-fashioned dress of that era, waltzing on a tree stump.

 
A Hole in Time
by John Lane

A Hole in Time, by John Lane

“I’m pretty confident I’m in the Pleistocene,” Terry Ferguson says when I ask how deep in time he’s standing. Terry is in an excavated pit. The dirt walls are straight, angular, and stair-step steeply downward toward the past like a drawing for a book explaining Euclidian geometry. The Pleistocene, the geologic epoch Terry invokes, ended about 13,000 years ago when glaciers covered about 30 percent of the earth and the climate here in Pickens County, South Carolina, was cool as Minnesota.

 
A Region of Wounds: Severing the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
by Tom Leskiw

A Region of Wounds: Severing the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, by Tom Leskiw

Long before the concept of political borders emerged, human and wildlife movement was tied to natural borders: desert and oasis, oak woodland and grassland, forest and brush field. Mountain ranges — later termed “sky islands” — were linked to valley “seas” of grass and brush by the riparian corridors of the Santa Cruz, San Pedro, and Rio Grande Rivers. The health of the landscape depended upon connectivity and movement.

UnSprawl Case Study.

Agritopia
Gilbert, Arizona

Terrain.org UnSprawl Case Study: Agritopia in Gilbert, Arizona.Crafted with a sort of evangelical "New Ruralism," the 166-acre Agritopia neighborhood east of Phoenix is built upon the developer's farm homestead, preserving or adding 20 acres of pasture, gardens, and orchards that supply a neighborhood farm stand and local restaurants in the project's agro-commercial area. The pedestrian-oriented community features a mix of homes reminiscent of Phoenix's historic neighborhoods, a community center, private K-12 school, lushly landscaped trails and parks, and — coming soon — a senior assisted-living center, town square, church, retail center, and bungalow office live/work units.
ARTerrain Gallery.

Sculptor R. L. Croft

ARTerrain Gallery by sculptor R. L. CroftFour series of impromptu sculptures-in-the-wild and studio sculptures from Washington, D.C.-based artist R. L. Croft.
 
  
Essays.

Night at the World's Largest Atomic Cannon
by Christopher Cokinos, with Audio

Night at the World's Largest Atomic Cannon, by Christopher Cokinos, with audioI must have been driving home from the quarterly state gathering of activists when suddenly I needed to climb the hill beside the highway, where the dark of just-past-dusk gathered all around the World’s Largest Atomic Cannon.

Body Exposed in the Golden Wind
by Florence Caplow

Body Exposed in the Golden Wind, by Florence CaplowSo there we were, onlookers, while hundreds of feet below us a person died in the waves, or was dying as we stood above. A Coast Guard boat slipped from the small harbor on the north side of the bridge as the police interviewed witnesses and waved traffic around the van.

Positioning
by J. David Bell

Positioning, by J. David BellMelanie, our co-pilot on this Father’s Day trip to Derry, Pennsylvania, was not entirely a figment of my imagination, but neither was she a real person. Rather, she was a digitized construct of our new portable GPS receiver, a gift from my wife’s twin sister. (Dizygotic, my wife six minutes the elder.)

Lee's Ferry
by Ben Quick

Lee's Ferry, by Ben Quick

Five-hundred feet below, between vertical walls of limestone, thin sandbars show here and there along narrow scree slopes, and chunks of bark and broken earth boil up in the greenish-brown current of the Rio Colorado as my son scoots back across the concrete neck of the old Navajo Bridge above Lee’s Ferry.

Mustering the Sky
by Mark Tredinnick

Mustering the Sky, by Mark Tredinnick

The heads of 30 kangaroos poked from the grasses bunched by Potter’s Cottages. The animals held themselves as still as holy men, if nowhere near as calm. They stood in a sustained and perfect vigil of alarm, and we were what alarmed them: two men on horses, crossing their ancestral grasslands.

Fiction.

The Hank Williams Dialogues, by Andrew WingfieldThe Hank Williams Dialogues
by Andrew Wingfield

Big Boss Man rules Cleave Springs from the white, four-door pickup truck that’s waiting for me when I pull into the parking lot behind the building. I take a spot near his and watch him climb down from the high cab. “Hank Williams,” he says, having heard the music through my open windows. “Your cheating heart will tell on you.”

The Garden, by Jaren WatsonThe Garden
by Jaren Watson

Lefty was in the raspberries again when I came home from work on Monday. He’d ravaged another big section. Broken stalks littered the ground around him. I went into the yard, unsure what to do. I thought walking toward him would scare him off but I’d gotten to the edge of the garden and he still stood there, munching raspberry stalks, the dewlap beneath his throat jiggling as he chewed.

Stones, by Jeffrey StevensonStones
by Jeffrey Stevenson

In the four years I had been waiting on Mr. Jenkins, this was the most he had spoken to me. It was also the first time his discussion had deviated from banking matters. “And the worst part, the burn mark won’t go away. The floor technician worked and worked, but it won’t clean off. It’s really a shame. The floors in that store are always so shiny, although I don’t like the new tile pattern since the remodel.”
  
  
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More Information
 
Interview.
 
 

A. R. Ammons
Poet, 1926-2001

Interviewed by Philip Fried
 

"But it is true that for the last ten years in particular, I have practiced over and over, poem by poem, to try to see if I could reach the absolute crazy points where what is happening in my mind and what is happening on the page seem to be identical. That’s the thing I’m working toward. The problem is that once you get there, it no longer seems necessary to write."
 

Full Interview  >>
 
 
  

 
 
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