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 
Please, Harold, this requires some further explanation.
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Ooooooooooops! What I mean is anyone who has walked this land in her clothing of stone and fire, so who has walked her for a long time, would have noticed a couple things: first, that when you go to the basic elements, such as rock, you get the most primitive form of life, so if you crush bedrock, you create an earth billions of years old; second, that when the fire comes, and fire is black, the first colonists are the spiders, who eat everyone else who blows in. I suspect this is one reason black widows are black. They set up shop within 24 hours. So, put it all together? If you crush the bones of mother earth, don’t expect anything other than a predatory kind of life which mirrors the act of crushing those bones in the first place. In the Okanagan, this behaviour is called development. If that word is well-placed, then I leave it to you to say what is being developed.
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