In November, in Cascadia, it is springtime, whether you are in the wetlands on an island  in the ocean …

Oyster Bay, Vancouver Island

… or far inland, in the grasslands, where we are expecting snow.

Abandoned Orchard at Turtle Mountain, Looking Down Priest Valley towards Okanagan Lake

No soil is needed to grow a garden here.
Soil would reduce fertility. Stone helps, though. Where water flows and life flows with it, life pools. It might freeze at night, but these domed shapes are warm. Rocks, too. Cozy!

The pools within the pools are great places for seeds to catch and flow and sprout. It’s much like the folds of hydrocarbons in protein strings. To flow, water doesn’t have to be liquid. That’s because it’s energy. It can be held in a matrix, which can become it.We call this matrix life. We call it green water. Green water can even drip and splash. Life reaches out its tongues to stop gravity and opens its wings to the sun.
It’s down to as much as 5 Below these nights, but only in the air. Not here. On volcanic earth. Here, spring ice breaks the basalt apart, and life becomes the frost in fall. Is it rain? Is it frost? Is it sun? Is it air? Is it stone? It is all of them together. It is earth. This is earth… not soil. This. Life.

Now. 55.000.000 years in the making, along the seam of two ancient island chains. Once the stone crashed in a volcanic tide. Now that energy is a surging wave. Still. It is still a splash of surf.

On Turtle Mountain, it is happening now. And not just here. On Rattlesnake Mountain, too.

Life is not built on the bodies of the dead. Not here. To come here in summer to see green lawns is to be poor beyond belief.

Here life is made within the bodies of the living. All are welcome.

None are turned away.

Is it the sun? Is it the earth?

It is both at once, where we are.