The colonial period is not over. How do I know? Because the millions of dollars that have been spent on this beach at the head of the West Arm of Okanagan Lake are used for a few months each summer. In the cold months, which is more than half of the year, it looks like the image below, empty of humans or almost any other life, other than a few cottonwood trees.
You cannot claim to own a place if you behave like that on a region’s main water-land interface. In the following image, you can see how it is done…
Crows Making Use of Winter Trees
Yes, winter recreation is up on the mountains.
Silver Star Ski Hill at the End of a Winter Day
It’s about movement, not about being in a place and standing still. Or is it?
If you don’t live in a place, it’s not yours.
Categories: Ethics, Nature Photography
Okanagan Okanogan 
– if you live in a place it’s yours to use for a while –
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Ah, yes, thanks. My point was that if you don’t use it in the winter, you don’t really live there, even for that while. Behaviour like that speeds up the process of cultural collapse. For a country like Canada, that likes to lay claim to most of the Arctic, while not living there or even pulling the same weight on the Arctic Council as, say, Iceland, the possible consequences for such behaviour are extreme. What’s more, it’s a country that exists in its present form in about 10 cities, with a huge junk of the planet in between, on which it does not live anymore. This will not last long. One cold have built something here. Instead, demographics will ensure an increasing de-coupling of people and land, with both paying the price.
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I’m afraid we are just as bad over here (even worse?!), laying claim not only of the Arctic but also of Antarctica …
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Still, your government has mined oil and set money aside for the people. Lots of it. Ours has mined the same amount of oil and set aside far less than 1% of what yours has. Instead, it has chosen to give the money to private hands, many of them American. On the other hand, there are, sigh, the salmon farms. On the other hand, they have permission. It’s people everywhere, I think, doing what people do.
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Actually I’m very-very grateful for having had a government wise enough to take the responsibility of not privatizing.
🙂
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You should be, but I do think you need to thank yourself and your fellow Norwegians.
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