cartography

Let Me Show You Some Water

Here’s some.

Vernon

Like it? Here’s some more:

Chopaka

Thirsty for more? Sure:

Vernon

Well, light showers, sure. Here’s a right downpour:

Blue Mud Dauber and Mariposa Lily

Or maybe a hail storm?

An August Storm

Or a spring flood?

Enough of this talk that land and water are separate, with land being property and water being a resource that either flows over it on the surface, can be mined from the subsurface to create surface water, or transported by technology of some form. The land and water are one. The stuff on the surface …

The Chilcotin River in Farwell Canyon

… is the equivalent of a cliff (or a silt bluff), a place where land and water separate and touch air separately, only to be reunited again shortly. East of the Coast Mountains and the Cascades, water is within the land; the stuff that flows on the surface can be taken away by the sky, or people. That’s why all life binds it back in and slows it down until it passes through a chain of life instead of a chain of geological spaces. Those spaces are just a result of a land-use policy (and water-use) set by gold miners in 1858 (and earlier south of the 49th Parallel). After all this time, the need for in-folding is incredibly strong. Sky and fire have been given too much power, with too much of that water blended with fir needles and air, in an explosive mix.

White Rock Lake Fire

Time to bury it inside the grass.

Junction Sheep Range

To do that, we’ll have to ammend land and water legislation to fit with the land-and-water we live in, rather than with the environment of regions with free-flowing water.

The Salish Sea at Dawn

When you have a political province that crosses different social and water regimes, simple, abstract laws won’t do. Only inclusive ones will.

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