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Photograph | Nick Caloyianis / National Geographic Image Collection




THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT

Progress Hits Home
BY MELISSA
HOLBROOK
PIERSON
Don't look now, but change just bulldozed the place you love.


Tune of the Tuna Fish
BY SANDRA STEINGRABER
Now that their favorite food poses serious health risks, what do you tell your kids?


The Nature of Violence
BY JEFFREY A. LOCKWOOD
A tender-hearted scientist confronts ill-tempered grasshoppers and the limits of human understanding.

ART OF LIVING

The Present Future
PAINTINGS BY
ALEXIS ROCKMAN
TEXT BY BILL
MCKIBBEN
A meticulous student of nature and human nature peers over the horizon of our current epoch.

Boat
BY NICHOLAS PECK
A resourceful Manhattanite plunders dumpsters to build an RV for the sea.



Conscience
BY SCOTT RUSSELL SANDERS
As his country wages a disastrous war and quashes dissent, a young man struggles to find his bearings as a pacifist and a patriot.

GROUNDSWELL

Moving
Mountains

BY ERIK REECE
A new uprising in the coal fields of Appalachia sets its sights on justice for people and the embattled landscape where they live.

Leaving Appalachia Right Side
Up...At a Profit
BY AMORY LOVINS
We don't need coal from mountaintop removal—in fact, America would save money if we left it right where it is.

COLUMNS

From the Faraway Nearby
Maps for the Year Ahead
BY REBECCA SOLNIT
Anniversaries are as much about the future as they are about the past.

The Tangled Bank
Squirrel Tales
BY ROBERT MICHAEL PYLE
As cities sprawl, animal neighbors will come and go, taking their nuty antics with them.
DEPARTMENTS

From the Editors

Contributors

Mailbox

Sacred & Mundane

Point of View
The High Cost of Low Prices
BY NEVA GOODWIN
You mean the economy is supposed to make everyone's lives better? Who knew?

Health and the Environment
Village of Healing
BY SETH ZUCKERMAN
Storytelling, basketmaking, and growing native foods are common prescriptions at one health clinic.

Blueprint for Change
A Clean Sweep
BY LESLIE GUTTMAN
Latina housekeepers are teaching the industry how to clean its act.

Orion Grassroots Network
Spotlight: Sauk Prairie
Conservation Alliance

Coda
No Great Things
BY DAVID JAMES DUNCAN

POEMS

The Names of Birds
BY TOM CRAWFORD


On the Etymology of Halo:
For a Would-Be Saint

BY KEITH ALTHAUS


Beneath the Snow, the Badger's Steady Breathing
JANE HIRSHFIELD

Driving Westward

BY WILLIAM WENTHE