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 
What a bitter joke.
LikeLike
Actually, it’s a fire forest. Trees ingrowing into grass are fire-not-yet-burnt. For thousands of years, indigenous people did burn here, for just this reason, as they did across the continent. The percentage of trees in British Columbia that must burn every 100 years is close to 100%. Lodgepole pine only lives 90 years, for instance, then it goes up like vaporized gasoline. Unburnt forest is artificially maintained, which is to say that the fire is intensified. A big problem, for sure, with terrible consequences, for sure, but that doesn’t stop the one truth: this is a fire forest. It is fire that is at home here.
LikeLike