This December, as the old year folds into the new, we are contemplating what we will carry across that threshold, what wonders, what losses, great and small. Issue Eleven is a series of conversations suspended between what was, what is, and what could be. These conversations occur in old living rooms and muddy ponds, hedgerows and kitchens, herbal shops and camping tents, continuously nurtured and confined by people and places. They remind us that the natural world always accompanies us in both wonder and loss, reflecting, comforting, speaking when nothing or no one else speaks, expressing the inexpressible.

As you explore our contributors’ work, we invite you to join in each conversation, and as you listen, to observe what messengers appear. Is there a wolf at your door? A tadpole there in the mud? Or even a jay at the feeder? We hope that you will carry these words with you, until, perhaps while wandering, perhaps while watching out your own window, something wondrous makes itself known to you before vanishing out of sight.