We went downtown today. Here’s one of the main intersections above Lake Lenore.

Settler culture calls this a rock that has fallen off a cliff, which it is, but if you are truly Cascadian, it is a lot more than that. It is your body reading your body in the world, or your mind reading your mind. Same thing in the end. Do you see bodies, animals and shapes in that rock? They are there to be seen. Do you see skins and textures and faces? They are there. Here, too, along the trail.

Faces, birds, animals, together and apart, in one body, they are all there. And to think that in settler culture, this is called “nature” and is classified as “rural”, as opposed to urban. Pretty funny, really. Oh, and the main city square? A good shelter.

Here, the stones are reversed. Where they were before, there is sky. Where they are now, you are. Because it’s not about the United States or Canada, British Columbia or Washington, those layers laid across the land that speaks through us. We are Cascadians first. Here is our city.

It is not to be read in written texts. Given how that kind of reading is going poorly in both parts of Cascadia right now, it’s time that we paid close attention to this older language that speaks us.

It is waiting.