Let the canyon wren be our guide. Road rubble thrown into the Snake River is just road rubble.

Photo by Harold Rhenisch

It’s just hard to climb over. If you really want to get ahead, keep on going. There are plenty of heads to go around. Heads going to the water…

Photo by Harold Rhenisch

… and at their back, heading out.

Photo by Harold Rhenisch

The second has a human form.

Photo by Harold Rhenisch

Talk about having eyes in the back of your head!

The principle at work here is not a reading of the landscape based on the human brain being keyed to see head shapes (which it is), but that a human head (or height) and a head of land (or head land) are both the same energy, call it what you like, manifested in two different forms, and both have the capacity for memory and sight. In other words, you find your way by them. The head below marks (or protects) the upper trail to the Lake Lenore Caves, for instance.

Photo by Harold Rhenisch

This one marks a sacred trail in Nlaka’pamux country.

Photo by Harold Rhenisch

And this one on Turtle Ridge above Canim Bay demonstrates how marmots get ahead.

Photo by Harold Rhenisch

Even bears have head energy. Here’s some of it sniffing me out.

Turtle Ridge. Photo by Harold Rhenisch

With that in mind, look at Buffalo Eddy again.

Photo by Harold Rhenisch

There are heads everywhere. If you want to see, you might do well to amplify these forms, in a hunting image, perhaps, gained by chipping off the surface of the rock to reveal the power within its head-ness:

Photo by Harold Rhenisch

Or in a protective one:

Buffalo Eddy. Photo by Harold Rhenisch

In this case, it doesn’t matter if you write it or the lichen does. You could do worse than be lichen, all touch, all skin but no eyes…

Photo by Harold Rhenisch

… or eyes everywhere.

Turtle Ridge. Photo by Harold Rhenisch

Eyes touch light. To touch is to see. And if you have eyes of your own, what better than to be a child and climb this stone at the old syilx village site at the eastern head of the Cougar Point Trail above Kalamalka Lake.

Kalamalka Lake Provincial Park. Photo by Harold Rhenisch

Can you imagine kids not climbing that to amplify the eyes in their own heads? The principle is universal. You don’t even have to climb them.

Here we are back above Lake Lenore. Photo by Harold Rhenisch

Memory will do. After all, the memory of stone is longer than that of any individual human, but if you join with it, you can speak across time.

Photo by Harold Rhenisch