The Similkameen River makes a big bend to the east at the foot of Chopaka and Hurley Peak (the left and right peaks below)

A few ridges and fifty miles to the south, the spectacularly mis-named Starvation Mountain is their twin.

After 12,000 years, this is still the spirit zone of the ice. We are the creatures who dwell in this energy zone. We call it the sky. Below is an image of their brother, K-Mountain, twenty miles upriver from Chopaka, in a spring dawn.

Isn’t that Sen’klip, Coyote, dressed all in white, playing his tricks on the mountain’s face? To live in the Similkameen is to live in a poem, with a refrain.