I went out to Kalamalka Lake the other day, as part of my exploration of how to read the land, a bit sideways to dominant cultural norms, but hopefully in a way that can lead us closer to the earth that those norms find continually elusive. Here’s what I was looking at, above the lake: a bit of volcanic burping, gouged up by a bit of glaciation an 10,000 years of weather and gravity.

There are miles of cliff like this, along the main trail to the east. I believe there are things to be read in those rocks, spiritual creatures, in the way that you are a spiritual creature, rising from certain forces. In a mind-view that sees the earth and the self as one, there’s no reason that thoughts, traditionally aligned to certain patterns, won’t find those patterns in the rock and thereby affirm the traditional patterns and bind the observer to place. I doubt you’ll see what I see there, which is exactly the point, but, hey, it might be interesting to have a look anyway. To help you out, I’ve blown that image apart into a kind of image map. You can see it, very large, in a .pdf file. To get it just click here: spread.pdf. Thanks. It’s also in the image below… none of it so good if you’re looking at this in a little tiny window on a device from a sci-fi novel. If that’s the case, look down at the bottom of this post. Here’s the image. If you open it in a new window, it should get bigger. Tomorrow, I’m going to show you how narrative might be constructed from these eruptions of the subconscious.

And, as promised, here’s something for the small screen folks.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at the narrative possibilities.