from the editor

I HOPE THAT our new look has made you smile with pleasure. The redesign took three months. Steve Anderson worked with me at every stage of the redesign process, and I very much appreciate Steve's efforts. When we first met with Don Mikush and John Long of MCreative, a Winston-Salem design firm, we already had decided that we wanted to change the journal's cover. Because environmental history is a graphics-rich subject, we were keen to have a design that made space for a cover photograph, cartoon, painting, or botanical illustration. We also wanted the new cover to make more of a statement the journal offers exciting and fresh insights into history, insights that flow from our appreciation of nature. Though we started out focused mostly on the cover, we also hoped that the redesign would give greater prominence to each of the journal's sections. Designer Catherine Clegg found ways to achieve all of our goals and more. Steve and I both are grateful to everyone on the MCreative team.       Our first cover image comes from the wonderful collection of photographs at the Forest History Society. Two men one white, one apparently black are in a stand of giant cypress in Arkansas. What do the trees mean to them? What is their relationship to each other, and to the photographer? The photograph is a fascinating historical artifact. Thanks to an ongoing digitization project, thousands of images from the Forest History Society collection now are accessible on the internet by clicking special projects on the society s website: http:// www.lib.duke.edu/forest. . . .