Writer Matthew Teague photographed these Uygur men, advancing upon Chinese forces, moments before they were shot.

Many people carry cameras  these days. Some have uncommon courage. On page 36 of this issue, in the story “The Other Tibet,” there is a photograph taken with a cell phone. The photographer was not a professional. She was a Uygur woman who documented the shooting of a Uygur man by Chinese security forces on a street in Urumqi, capital of China’s Xinjiang region. She later gave the picture to National Geographic’s photographer Carolyn Drake.

Bobby Model passed away this week.  I am incredibly sad and will miss him terribly. I kept hoping he'd recover and be back, with a shy smile, talking about photography and his next adventure. He made the lives of everyone he touched richer. 

He was a valued colleague and friend to all of us at National Geographic and will be deeply missed.  Our thoughts are with his family.

Lying on a soft, damp forest floor, looking up and oblivious of time, I’m in one of the most magical places on Earth, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park in northern California. I can hear the panic in my mother’s voice as she searches for me—her ten-year-old who has a habit of disappearing in the woods. I should shout out to put her at ease, but not just yet. I want a few more minutes of solitude with the tallest trees I’ve ever seen. 

It may seem like madness for a photographer to repeatedly risk his life in one of the most dangerous places on Earth, but that is exactly what Pascal Maitre did on five visits to Somalia. (He photographed the street scene above in Mogadishu.) Without a stable government since 1991, the country is arguably the scene of Africa’s worst humanitarian crisis. It’s one of the deadliest places a journalist can be. Pascal began photographing there in 2002 and established the relationships that made this month’s “Shattered Somalia” story possible. In 2008 he returned with writer Robert Draper.

Sockeye salmon shoot up the rapids and flip in midair. I see their mirror-bright sides catch and scatter the sun. Propelled by instinct, they return to their birthplace to spawn. Commercial fishermen caught 90 percent of these fish’s mates even before the salmon began their odyssey up British Columbia’s Fraser River. The ones left have beaten the odds so far. But their journey isn’t over, as I found out many years ago on an early assignment for the Geographic. I watch as 13-year-old Gordon Alec (above), of the Lillooet tribe, dips his net in the rapids and pirouettes to his left with a captured fish. The ritual of netting salmon is Gordon’s ancestral legacy. Drying racks line the Fraser’s banks. Young and old camp out under the summer sky and celebrate the catch. But regret is expressed too, as elders recount how diminished the run has become in their lifetime.

I got busted at the milk shake stand at my first state fair. My father had dropped me off along with my prize hog at the Salem fairgrounds for the Oregon State Fair’s livestock competition. He paid for a week’s food and lodging in the 4-H dorm and went to visit his parents for the day. When he returned, we went to the Dairy Bar. It came time to pay for my milk shake. I was broke. My father asked what I’d done with all the money he gave me. I confessed I’d spent it all in two hours on the bumper cars.

“You have to get up early if you want to beat Otto” was the saying in Oregon’s Rogue River Valley, where I grew up. Otto was Otto Bohnert, “an awesome farmer—always experimenting,” says Dick Dunn, his nephew, also a farmer. Otto was famous for his 120-bushel-an-acre wheat crop in the late 1960s—in the midst of the green revolution, the movement to increase food yields by using new technology. His yields, thanks to superior wheat varieties, irrigation, and chemical fertilizers, were double the normal in our valley.

We talk a lot about the hardware of environmentally responsible buildings, like double-pane windows, energy-efficient heat pumps, and compact fluorescent bulbs. Those are unarguably important and necessary, but it's difficult to feel uplifted by the sight of a roll of R-38 fiberglass insulation.

That's what makes this month's story on green roofs so engaging. Here is where being responsible and attuned to the environment pairs up with spiritual satisfaction. I defy you to look at the image on page 86-87 of the cottage-like garden atop a Manhattan apartment roof and not smile.

Samantha (at left) and Natalie Turner sweep sludge from a trough on their family’s drought-stricken farm in New South Wales, Australia.

The diesel engine clatters to life. My friend Mike is giving me a quick lesson in how to operate his father’s bulldozer. Accompanied by a cacophony of metal on metal, I maneuver pedals and levers. I lower the blade and begin knocking down trees. I’m helping build a logging road near Prospect, Oregon. Despite a lack of finesse, I’m making progress and having fun. I’m on top of the world.

When I read Robert Draper’s “Australia’s Dry Run” and look at Amy Toensing’s photographs in this month’s issue, I’m reminded of that day three decades ago when I was young and didn’t understand the potential consequences of bulldozers.

“There is no feast which does not come to an end,” a Chinese proverb warns, and this month’s story on Canadian oil sands is a cautionary tale about the consequences of large appetites. With the decline of conventional oil reserves and the rising price of oil extraction, sources like oil sands—layers of tarlike bitumen mixed with clay, sand, and water—are increasingly attractive as a way to satisfy the world’s craving for hydrocarbons. The catch: Extracting them is messy and costly to the environment.