Atmos

Climate and Culture
Butoh dancers
Volume 10 Afterlife
Volume 09 Kinship
Volume 08 Rhythm
Volume 07 Prism
Volume 06 Beyond
Volume 05 Hive
Alaska glacier by Daniel Shea
Volume 04 Cascade
White rhinoceros sanctuary in Africa by Sam Rock
Volume 03 Flourish/
Collapse
Volume 02 Latitude
Volume 01 Neo-Natural

In This Issue

Introducing Hive
As we have faced a public health crisis, a global reckoning around race and colonization, political warfare, and a United States that has never felt so divided, it has been a year of attempting to answer a question that is at the heart of our latest issue, Hive: How do we work together? Read Article
The Hive Mind
In the digital age, humanity’s behavior emulates a hive as never before: worker bees buzzing around the world, connected by common causes, survival resting on each other’s shoulders. As Ruth H. Hopkins writes, that could be our saving grace—or our downfall. Read Article
Queen P: Pattie Gonia on Drag and Identity in the Outdoors
Whether they’re hiking in heels or organizing on the trails, drag environmentalist Pattie Gonia is on a mission to bring inclusivity to the outdoors—proving that climate and queerness go hand in hand and that community makes a queen out of everyone. Read Article
TikTok for the Planet
Over the course of the pandemic, TikTok has become a burgeoning platform for young activists of color who are taking on the climate crisis. Read Article
Flight Patterns
Few phenomena are as majestic as the murmuration of starlings. When hundreds to thousands of these birds flock together, their movement appears to be of one mind, marking mutable matrices across the sky. Their secret? Each starling attends to seven others, ensuring even effort distribution and flawless form. Read Article
On a Move
In 1985, the Philadelphia police department bombed the headquarters of MOVE, killing 11 people and destroying 61 homes in the neighborhood. Thirty-six years later, Mike Africa Jr—a member of the organization’s founding family—reflects on the persecution his community has faced for a life lived in pursuit of liberation both for people and the planet. Read Article
Resting on and for the Earth
So many of us are worker bees, trapped in a capitalist 9-to-5 grind mindset that leaves us sleep-deprived, exhausted, and unable to imagine. Nap bishop Tricia Hersey, founder of the Nap Ministry, sees rest as a radical act of resistance and decolonization—particularly for Black people, whose rest has been and continues to be disrupted by white supremacy. Hersey speaks with brontë velez, a founding member of Lead to Life, about how to envision a new way of living that centers rest and liberation. Read Article
Intelligent Design
An experimental fusion of architecture and ecology, Arcosanti was built on a bedrock of the best intentions: creativity, communal living, and reconnecting to nature. But what began as a beacon for those wanting an alternative to urban sprawl became a battleground between harmony and hubris. Read Article
The Desert’s Coolest Commune
In the arid deserts of southern Africa, tiny brown birds come together to build thatched-straw collectives. Read Article
The Altered Destiny
The climate crisis is not only one of space—our physical environment—it’s also a crisis of time. Averting a catastrophic future means unearthing the past and protecting those most at risk in the present, honoring the ecologically conscious framework that lies deep within Black culture. Read Article
Mirror Image
Art imitates life. As we mimic the miracles of nature, we repattern our relationship to the worldwide web that connects all things, blurring the boundaries between the beautiful and biological. Read Article
Family Trees
A lifetime devotee of forest ecology, Dr. Suzanne Simard’s research has forever changed the way that we understand forests from collections of individual trees to interconnected communities. Ahead of the release of her first book, she opens up about everything trees have taught her about systems, spirit, and what it means to be part of a living whole. Read Article
Mythos and Mycology
As humans start to pay more attention to them, fungi are changing how we see the story of life on our planet. Biologist Merlin Sheldrake weighs in on why mushrooms have always been main characters. Read Article
Birds of Paradise
For more than half a century, Dr Dee Boersma has worked to conserve penguin colonies across the world. But her career began in the Galápagos, studying a colony of penguins uniquely adapted to life on the unpredictable archipelago. Read Article
Congregation
After over a year spent social distancing and living in pods, proximity has never been so imperative—particularly in relation to the outdoors, which has become a sacred space for group gatherings. Read Article
Jungle Retreat
In the tropical jungle of India’s state of Goa, SanQtuary Goa offers queer people a space to rest, commune, and deepen their connections to nature and ancestry. India recently overturned a colonial British law criminalizing homosexuality, and the sanctuary wishes to create new, joyful stories for the queer Goan community. Read Article
Pearls in the Nacre
On the island of Puerto Rico, between the crashing waves of the Atlantic and the colorful walls of Old San Juan, sits La Perla, a seaside town with a history of community, dance, and resistance. Read Article
Costa Chica
This dry and tropical strip of the coast from Acapulco to Oaxaca is home to a community of kaleidoscopic origin. There are Afro-Mexicans descended from enslaved Africans, Indigenous Mesoamerican Mixtecos, the Indigenous Amuzgo and Chatino peoples, and mixed-race mestizos, all living together off the sea and the land. Read Article
On Board
Sandy Alibo and Kuukua Eshun wanted to empower women to take up space in extreme sports, so they founded the first all-girls’ skate group in Ghana. The Skate Gal Club encourages women to hone their tricks and share their experiences. Read Article
Bonding Act
We are amalgamations. Just as our bodies are composed of millions of microbial species engaged in an elaborate, chemical circus, we are inseparably entangled with one another—a human super organism that makes one wonder where one body ends and another begins. Read Article
Get Well

Bedouin Herbalism: Abundance in the Desert

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Ayurveda: Wisdom of the Elements

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Traditional Chinese Medicine: Healing at Home

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The Night Shift
Under the protective veil of the dark, pollinators like moths and bats take to the skies, visiting moonlit flowers that stay open and spill out their fragrance in the dusk. Photographer Gareth McConnell turns his lens on nature’s enchanting nighttime phenomenon. Read Article