connection to nature

Story·Christine Wang — Wind personified as a destructive force tears through a forest, damaging willow, birch, and reeds while warning of fighting spirits.

Poetry·Ethan Issadore — A camping scene unfolds through rhyming verse as the speaker reflects on fire, forest, and the cyclical nature of outdoor experience from night to dawn.

Poetry·Gia Koo — A child observes a lime tree through the seasons, noting its winter bareness, spring birdsong, summer growth, and autumn abundance of leaves.

Poetry·Ida Wiesenfeld — Swallows move through a day from dawn to twilight, their appearance transforming with the changing light from silver firs to moonlit wings.

Poetry·Rose Torrey — A summer evening unfolds through sensory details — soft light, rushing water, owl calls, and moonlight stretching across quiet land.

Personal Narrative·Clementine Lewis — A young swimmer discovers the underwater world of a Bermuda coral reef, encountering a parrotfish that transforms her understanding of the ocean.

Poetry·Amity Doyle — A tree alone in a honeysuckle field becomes a meditation on loneliness and loss, its reaching branches mirroring human grief.

Poetry·Benjamin Feinberg — A young poet observes rivers, leaves, clouds, and birds, concluding with the hope that nature returns their love.

Poetry·Jordan Sung — Light streams through canyon rocks and trees, transforming water into emerald and creating a dance of shadows and illumination in a moss-carpeted grotto.

Story·Marlene Dukes — A lonely girl's accidental cross-country journey in a malfunctioning self-driving car becomes an adventure in independence and connection with an unlikely companion.