This is one of a series of posts  on creating sustainability in the Okanagan/Okanogan, a valley between the Monashee, Okanagan and Pasayten Ranges in north western North America. This valley, and the shrub steppe it is the shore of, is hot, dry, wet and cold, depending on when you encounter it. My part of it is also flush with Canadians seeking an American South all of their own. The “American” part of it is flush with families from the American South, who came seeking industrial farms, after the collapse of slavery made industrial farming questionable in the South. What my beautiful country doesn’t have a lot of is people who regard it on its own terms and learn to move lightly on its land. For that, I suggest a large influx of Syrians. Instead of another generation of people from Canada, retiring to my northern half of the valley for an image of wine bars and Eden, and another generation of people from Seattle retiring to the central region of this shrub steppe for the same gosh-darned thing, let’s have a people who know how to live on hot, mixed climactic zones. Let’s have our brothers and sisters from Syria, who have been driven away from the land into the cities of Europe, Turkey and North America, where they are not at home. Here, we could learn from them. We need to learn from them. This, for example, is here:

Vernon: the Canadian Version

Yakima: the American Version

Lake Lenore Caves, the Sinkiuse Version

And this is Syria.

This is Syria, too:

There is so much talk of the political danger of bringing people from the Middle East to Canada, but, for the love of Allah and Jehovah, at the heart of Islam is the land. This land:

And by the heart of Islam, I mean the individual heart of each of the faithful. Our brothers and sisters have been keeping the land for, what, 20,000 years? 50,000? Let’s welcome them home from the wars colonialism dumped on them like shrapnel. Let’s say, “after your long journey, welcome home, look how beautiful you are.” And let’s sit at their feet and work at their sides, turning our bungled retirement subdivisions into living space:

And I don’t mean for us. For a hundred generations hence. Sure, we could just go to the Okanagan Indian Band and achieve the same thing. Let’s do that, too. As for beauty, look:

Look again:

Look again:

Aren’t they just great? I need these people as my neighbours. I don’t need this bullshit:

http://www.thewinefestivals.com

Let’s stop drugging ourselves.