Out for a pre-dawn walk with my dog earlier this week, I happened to see the recent SpaceX rocket launch from Cape Canaveral. I didn’t know it in that moment, but the crew of Polaris Dawn were on their way to travel farther away from our home than any human beings since the Apollo program. I was struck by the distance they traveled—and the time it took—just to pass beyond the pull of Earth, by the time it took before they became just a tiny glowing dot so far above me. But even as I felt the vastness of space unfolding above, I also felt a connection between that rocket, and those four people leaving our atmosphere, and my dog, and the mysteries he smelled in the early morning air.

Our fall issue explores this duality of feeling both infinitesimally small and deeply connected, and the pieces in this issue probe connections among memory, loss, and resilience that reveal the intimate ties between our inner lives and the natural world. Contributors such as Richard Collins and Angela Waldie reflect on nature as a mirror to human experience, from the Zen meditations of “The Samadhi of Words” to the elegy for a vanishing glacier in “To Mourn a Glacier.” Other pieces, like Leila Farjami’s “Legacy in Red” and Jonathan Ukah’s “After the Flood,” examine cultural identity and historical trauma through personal and collective memory. Themes of human vulnerability and resilience surface in contributions by Howie Good and Nicole Dufalla, while reflections on environmental change and our place in the larger universe appear in pieces by Denise David and Dan Schall. Together, the work in this issue explores the complex interplay between human existence and the world we are part of, culminating in Michelle Holland’s “The All”: “I am reminded there is no fixing, / just this unbearable careening toward / all that evanesces.”

Issue Thirty-Four includes poetry and prose by Angela Waldie, Barbara Joy Beatus-Vegh, Brittany Hague, Christin Hardee, C.W. Bryan, Dan Schall, Denise David, Howie Good, Jaylee Marchese, Jeff Bernstein, Jessie Brown, Jonathan Ukah, Josiah Nelson, Kristin Gifford, L. Lois, Leila Farjami, Michelle Holland, Nicole Dufalla, Richard Collins, and Svetlana Litvinchuk, and images by Dylan J. Seeman and W Goodwin. The cover image is by Richard Collins.

Digital and print versions of our fall issue are available through Mag Cloud. Digital versions of the issue are free, and perfect-bound print copies of the issue are available for twelve dollars. You can order print copies and read the issue online at this link.