Natalie Middleton is a freelance writer educated at Johns Hopkins University who specializes in science writing and communication.
Natalie Middleton
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The Man Who Made Lonesome George Less Lonely
This story was published as a companion piece to Orion‘s Winter 2023 Love Issue, a tome about devotion. Subscribe here and learn more here. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PACIFIC, the black, Continue reading
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Beware the Fairy Host
In Ireland, Halloween (Samhain) is a major temporal hinge—when the year turns from light to dark, and the boundary between the living and dead, the fantastic and the mundane, grows gossamer Continue reading
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Tune In: Listen to 3 Shifting Soundscapes
This story is part of Bird Week 2023, in celebration of Orion’s newest anthology, Spark Birds. You can preorder this book, packed with some of Orion‘s greatest essays about all things feathered, right here. On Continue reading
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Meet the Zinnias Astronaut Scott Kelly Grew in Space
“ON MY FIRST MISSION I WAS so focused on what I was doing—I didn’t want to screw anything up—that I didn’t look out the window during launch. We were in space Continue reading
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The Age of Plutonium
Yucca Flat, Nevada, of the early 1950s is a diorama of modern America. Beneath desert stars a faux suburbia has been constructed, with ranch-style homes, utility poles, and pantries filled with Continue reading
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The Search for the Golden Spike
ALARMED BY FAST-GROWING SCARS of climate change, extinction rates, and ocean acidification, geologists from the International Commission on Stratigraphy—tasked with defining the official Geological Time Scale and known for their glacially-paced Continue reading
Field Notes
True Colors
A slight shift in sunlight brings blooms of viridian and teal, sparkling with rills of jade, peridot, and radiant gold, always there but rarely visible. Continue reading
Field Notes
Moon Tree
THERE IS NORMALLY a great deal of height involved. A female cone sprouts on a high branch, producing a few winged seeds at the base of each scale. They might get Continue reading
Field Notes
Friend of the Water
Tread lightly through a soundscape of an Ecuadorian cloud forest teeming with see-through frogs. Continue reading