We read the news about torrential rain in some distant place, separated from it by our screens. We add a grating of fresh nutmeg to our food, in ignorance of the spice’s cultural history. We walk along a riverbank and see water, little water, only to find that there used to be more. The seventh issue of Springs ponders on emplacement and visibility, takes us through the centuries, and echoes an urgent call to attend to nonhuman sentience. Catherine Bush walks the streets of Venice, seeking art that engages with Rachel Carson at the Biennale Arte 2024. In “The Unbearable Weight of Displaced Weather,” Mike Hulme looks at sociotechnical developments that have changed the climate and the way we experience the weather. Amitav Ghosh takes us to the Banda Islands to unravel “The Nutmeg’s Curse.” “Walking a Sicilian River” by Paolo Gruppuso and Erika Garozzo ruminates on the life of Sicily’s largest but now disappearing river—the Simeto. Processing the horrid February 2025 “Killing [of] a Baboon” by a group of schoolchildren in South Africa, Sandra Swart looks back at history and examines the role of superstition and the occult in the ongoing violence against these primates. In the final contribution, Mascha Gugganig and Judith Bopp discuss “Organic Farming in Thailand” and prevailing narratives about agriculture.
