In the inaugural issue of the Orion Nature Quarterly, released in June 1982, George Russell, the publication's first Editor-in-Chief, openly articulated Orion's values:
“It is Orion’s fundamental conviction that humans are morally responsible for the world in which we live, and that the individual comes to sense this responsibility as he or she develops a personal bond with nature.”
In the years since, Orion has become a focal point in an extremely rich era of nature writing, and it has stayed committed to that underlying principle, even as the magazine has grown into a bimonthly and its interests have expanded to cover not just environmental but also cultural concerns.
