Orion: People and Nature

Abstract

Review: Orion: People and Nature By the Myrin Institute Reviewed by John R. Ferguson Waterford, Ontario Orion: People & Nature. Great Barrington, MA: The Myrin Institute. Quarterly. ISSN: 1058-3130. One year of Orion (four issues) included with $25.00 annual membership fee in the Orion Society. Mail to 195 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA 01230, or fax to 413/528-0676. E- MAIL: Orion@orionsociety.org In a recent book on Canadian environmental policy, Hessing and Howlett argue that it is not accuracy of knowledge but the lack of political willingness to implement that knowledge in the interests of protecting human lives that allows environmental degradation (p. 200). If this is true, reverence may precede science in promoting environmental protection and making alternative modes of relating to nature increasingly relevant. Orion helps to fulfil this lacuna by exploring the manifold ways in which nature is essential to our daily lives. Orion is a journal about people and nature that has been around since 1982. It documents the strained yet poignant relationship between humans and their ecological context. While its subject matter is as free ranging as the wild itself, it maintains an impressive thematic and coherent presentation. In the four editions (reviewed v.15 #4 - v. 16 #3) there are articles, essays, photo essays, poems, reviews and letters about topics such as ecosophy, catch and release fishing, aspen trees, buffalo, cows, cougars, the seasons, building a local library, environmental justice and racism, national parks, butterflies, orchards, inter-species music, fathers and sons, the Web, language, Mount St. Helens, sustainable logging, neighborhood renewal, African Americans and nature, loggers and tree huggers, and arts and the earth. Writers include bell hooks, David Ehrenfeld, Wendell Barry, David Ferry, John Elder, Barry Lopez, and Bill McKibbon to name a very few. It explores nature as a trail in the woods rather than as a labyrinth of policies, numbers and economic interests. Orion approaches species as creatures and movements as people. It attempts to re-place and repopulate the cognitive horizon with the aspects of nature which will matter long after the remaining species celebrate the passage of our ephemeral pursuit of wealth . It is direct sustenance to the environmentalist's arduous