I have worked here since 2011 telling stories of the Earth as preparation for a history of the Intermontane Grasslands of Central Cascadia and the rainswept coast that keeps them windy and dry. Now I am presenting this history, step by step, as I have learned it, often from the land itself. The history of this region includes the Canadian colonial space “The Okanagan Valley”, which lies over the land I live in above Canim Bay. The story stretches deep into the American West, into the US Civil War, the War of 1812, and the Louisiana Purchase, as well into the history of the Columbia District of the Hudson’s Bay Company. In all, the story spans the Chilcotin and Columbia volcanic plateaus and the basins that surround them. In this vast watershed lie homelands as old as 13,200 years (Sequim) and 16,200 years (Salmon River.) That’s how far we are walking together here, who are all the land speaking.
Okanagan Okanogan 
Beautiful, Harold. Lovely to contemplate on a warm sunny day in the city.
Your selection did make me wonder, should these pictures be shown to a group of children, how many would know these plants are grass. Most may only know it as the severely snipped covering of their neighbourhood’s lawns. Now, in the right place, a lawn can also be pleasing. The trouble is, so many aren’t in the right place and would be much better abandoned for entirely different plants.
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I think it’s a sacred duty to teach children and show them the beauty of the non-human world.
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Yes, indeed! I would love to see you in the schools… And in schools for teachers, too…
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That would be ideal. It would be powerful to move the schools out to the grass, too. There is, however, no budget for it, in a classroom/teacher mode of schooling, such as that in British Columbia. I wish it were otherwise. In place of that, I’m working on my book of alternative crops, and so on, in the hope that that will get into the schools, in ways that I can’t.
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