For as long as people have been writing, they have been writing about nature. But nature--as we know it--is changing. Economic migration, overpopulation, and climate change are transforming the natural world into something unfamiliar. As our conception and experience of nature changes, so too does the way we write about it. In this special issue Jonathan Raban goes on the road in the American West; Kathleen Jamie dissects a human colon; Matthew Power squats in the Bronx; Paul Farley and Niall Griffiths write about escaping the inner city; Edward Platt goes inside Israel's "bird plague zones"; Robert Macfarlane and Justin Partyka ghost-hunt in the fens; Richard Mabcy searches for the Fortingall Yew; Benjamin Kunkel drops out in Colorado; Philip Marsden ponders the mystery of Cornwall's ancient stones; and Donovan Wylie photographs the demolition of the Maze prison. Also Seamus Heaney, Mark Cocker, Anthony Doerr, Jim Holt, David Heatley, Roger Deakin's notebooks, poetry by Sean O'Brien, and a new short story by Lydia Peelle.