Trees are great energy machines, transforming the nuclear fusion reactions of the sun into matrices of carbon and water. How cool is that? Here’s what that energy looks like when it leaks […]
Social Energy
Birds Made of Light
Humans are living creatures, which I think is pretty grand. I hope we can keep it that way. There are some side effects of living, though. For one, it makes us likely […]
A New Season
It’s not spring, not exactly. It’s something else. Things are warming up. Here we are at the frozen North Arm of Okanagan Lake … Leads Opening in the Ice Those are holiday […]
Reverse Nunataks
A nunatak is an unglaciated island of stone and a few survivor species in the midst of a glacial landscape. Recent studies in Sweden have shown that some Swedish spruce trees survived […]
Wild Humans, Tame Horses, Brother Deer
In some ways of thinking, it’s not just humans who are persons. In ways that have worked well during the greater part of the life of our species on this planet, this […]
Pussy Willows and Land for All
Welcome to the road ditch: a prime spring habitat. First, to an Okanagan Indian Band ditch… Pussy Willow Preparing to Bloom Imagine the sound of cars roaring past behind your back, and […]
The Joke is On Us
It’s that time of year! An Old Tradition Hangs On Despite the infill of subdivisions, old habits of spring burning aren’t dead yet. The bigger the flames the better, it seems. Sun […]
Hints at a New Science of Life
The science of botany got its start in plant classification and botanical gardens. Because of that, contemporary human understanding of plant communities largely revolves around species and their interactions. The results can […]
Sour Dates
They might be called russian-olives, and they might look and taste like sour, sawdusty olives, but they’re really dates, and they are weeds. They wreck ecosystems, displace native species, reduce environmental diversity, […]
Standing Still
A long time ago, orcharding started in the Okanagan when Lord Aberdeen and Lady Aberdeen planted the Coldstream Ranch with fruit so they could make jam and compete with these folks from the old […]
Okanagan Okanogan 