Before glaciation, the smooth, rounded hills of the Okanagan …

… were a series of cinder cones and stratovolcanoes rising above a 100 kilometre slip along (across) a deep fault. Perhaps parts of Vernon looked like the Berserkjarhraun.
Likely, Kelowna looked like Snaefell, with or without its glacier.

Westbank or Summerland might have looked like these outwash floods from Snaefell.

Likely, large parts of the valley were full of cinder cones like the ones below at Berserkjarhraun. The ice would have carried them away, ground them to sand, and dumped them in the waters off the coast of Oregon.

There were probably mystical creatures everywhere, like this elvish sheepdog and sheepfold at Dritvik.

And little people. All carried away by the ice and turned to sand.

The next time you walk the Oregon Coast, remember where you are and whose bones you are standing on. For now, to know the Okanagan it helps to go to Iceland, where these powers are still young. To know Iceland, it helps to go to the Okanagan, where they are 55,000,000 years old.

Some things change little in all that time. The ice didn’t take everything away. Look at what endures and what blossoms.