A decade after fire, in the pink dawn light after a skiff of snow, Terrace Mountain reveals its story. This story is not new, only new to us, who have known it until now only under a screen of trees. But this is a volcano. It is a fire mountain. It centres the North Okanagan. Wherever you are, it is there, surprisingly close.

Sure, this place …

…reserves the right to call itself that. In fact, to people who live in Kelowna, it is the Okanagan. It is that central to British Columbian concerns. Makes no difference. This is the centre:

I am trying to show you here what “British Columbia” looks like. It looks like this:

It is not this:

That is the mountain.