Journalist Ben Goldfarb follows the winding course of the Klamath River, from Oregon’s high desert plateaus to the Pacific Ocean in Northern California, as its four most obstructive dams are dismantled under a restoration plan reopening hundreds of miles of salmon spawning habitat. Ben chronicles how the prolonged absence of salmon has reshaped this waterway, its surrounding redwood forests and canyons, and the Yurok, Karuk, Hoopa, and Shasta tribes for whom this creature is not only sustenance, but sacred kin. Tracing the monumental effort to restore the vital presence of salmon, Ben witnesses how the restitching of relationships between land, fish, and humans is nourishing this ecosystem anew. 

Read the essay, featuring a postscript from Ben as he returns to the Klamath

Discover our latest print edition, Volume 6: Seasons.

Photo by Kiliii Yüyan.

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Earlier this year, the remarkable eco-philosopher Joanna Macy passed away at age ninety-six. Among her many gifts, she was a seminal translator of the great twentieth-century poet Rainer Maria Rilke. In our final episode of the year, we return to a selection of translations of Rilke from The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, by Joanna and award-winning poet Anita Barrows, that speak to the beauty and mystery present in worlds both seen and unseen, the unknowability of the Divine, and the union of nature and the transcendent. We share them this holiday period in the hope they nourish heart and spirit, inviting reflection on all that is given and all that fades away.

Cover artwork by Claire Collette.

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In this week’s story, Australian writer and Zen roshi Susan Murphy explores how haiku’s reflections of the seasons are being disrupted by the climate crisis. How will this poetic form bear witness to the ferocity of change reshaping the seasons? Woven with verses from Bashō, Buson, Issa, and fellow Volume 6 contributor Ron C. Moss, this story contemplates whether haiku may, in fact, be a vessel for holding the paradox of the seasons in this moment: allowing us to both mourn and love a rapidly evolving Earth. 

Read the essay. 

Discover our latest print edition, Volume 6: Seasons.

Image: Asako Narahashi, Kawaguchiko #5, 2003

© Asako Narahashi / Courtesy of Ibasho

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Fungi are veteran survivors of ecological disruption, and they demonstrate a radically different approach to crisis and decision-making than we do. While we tend to work with binaries and control when navigating uncertainty, mycelium works from a place of relationality. In this conversation, acclaimed mycologist and author Merlin Sheldrake explores what we can learn from mycelial networks about building flexible ecological, social, or structural systems that are rooted in mutuality and exchange. Tracing the ways we can embrace a mycelial way of thinking, he invites us to dwell within the “substrate of mystery” embodied by fungi: a liminal space where new ways of being can emerge.

Read the transcript.

Photo by Tomas Munita.

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This Thanksgiving holiday, we return to a conversation with Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, where she talks about her new book The Serviceberry, which emerged from an essay she wrote for us about the potential of a gift economy to recognize the sacred nature of the Earth. Robin introduces a set of ethical and pragmatic principles, known as “the Honorable Harvest,” that orients us to take only what we need, share abundance, and offer gratitude for what is selflessly given to us; and leads us towards embodying a simple “practical reverence” for the Earth.  

Read the transcript.

Discover our latest print edition, Volume 6: Seasons.

Photo courtesy of MacArthur Foundation.

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In November, we celebrated the launch of our latest print edition, Seasons, at the Tate Modern in London. Recorded live at the event, this conversation featuring four Volume 6 contributors, delves into each of their stories and the themes of requiem, invitation, and celebration at the heart of their seasonal experiences. From honoring the fragility of spring birdsong, to finding an expanded sense of self through seasonal “noticelings,” this wide-ranging and lively exchange explores the myriad ways of remembering our relationship with the seasons. 

Read the transcript. 

Discover our latest print edition, Volume 6: Seasons.

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In this conversation from our archive, Australian writer and Zen roshi Susan Murphy immerses us in the ancient tradition of koan and the power of the “not-knowing mind” to open a treasury of resources for meeting the climate crisis. Sharing several koans from Zen masters that push at the boundaries of our consciousness, she speaks to the way they can draw us deeper into kinship and reminds us that the Earth Herself is a koan waiting to be known. 

Read the transcript.

Photo by Warren Summers.

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We return to one of our most in-depth interviews this week: a conversation with poet Jane Hirshfield, who has contributed a new poem to our latest print edition, Volume 6: Seasons. Reciting several poems from her prolific body of work, including Time Thinks of Time, she speaks about how her Zen practice has led her to embrace the largeness of time’s mystery. She shares how this inner “spaciousness,” present in many of her poems, can uncover intimacy with both the ordinary and the divine. 

Read the transcript.

Read Jane’s poem “Time Thinks of Time.”

Photo by Curt Richter.

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Probing the flatness of his Midwestern landscape, Roy Scranton challenges us to peer beyond what meets the eye to engage more thoughtfully with a place’s ecological, geological, and cosmological dimensions. What first appears to him as farmland, highways, and worn industrial sprawl in his new home of South Bend, Indiana, begins under sustained attention to disclose rich layers of physical and temporal meaning. Roy invites us to practice this same attentiveness, allowing ourselves to be changed by the stories that make a place new and strange, and the mundane alive with resonance.

Read the transcript.

Artwork by Nico Krijno.

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In this final talk of a three-part series, Emergence executive editor and Sufi teacher Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee speaks about two essential elements needed if we are to tend to a relationship of reverence with the Earth: humility and offering. To ground ourselves in respect for the power of the Earth, and respond to Her unconditional generosity, we can begin by remembering to de-center our needs, and instead ask ourselves: What attitude towards the seasons can help me develop a relationship to place? How can I respond with love not only to the wonder, but to the pain of the Earth? When we are rooted in this space of humility and offering, we can remain open and present with Her beauty and loss. 

Read the transcript. 

Discover our latest print edition, Volume 6: Seasons.

Artwork by Thoth Adan

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