I’ve got it! Creativity is the act of settling land. Instead of knowing where you are and planting crops where gravity, sun, rain and snow say to plant them, like the mustard […]
Future Memory
Fixer Upper in the Okanagan
With a little love, it could be a home again. The idea is that species like Western Bluebirds … … will maintain their presence in a grassland if bird houses are erected […]
The Fire Deficit and the Depth of Global Warming
For 10,000 years, the people of the grasslands have been living in a fire landscape. For 100 years, they have been living in a fire debt. This landscape: Selah Creek, Yakama Nation […]
Mariposa Lily Has a Visitor (or two)
It’s always an adventure to see who comes to dance… … and then, after making the circuit … … half-drugged, stumbles out… Good times for all!
What to Do When You Lose Your Hat in the Wind
Seriously, out in the shrub steppe it does get windy, and losing a hat is a real thing. The sun can then burn you into a lump of tar. I had a […]
Evolution in Action
Not all invasive species are trouble. When the land is stripped of life and turned into dust, cheatgrass and sagebrush, the swallowtails seek out alfalfa that has escaped from nearby farms. Western […]
Cinnamon Bear in the Sagebrush
I thought we’d go and check out the wetland just behind the top of the hill today, and see if the wet spring had put water in it. It has been dry […]
Fate, Race and Populism in the Third Reich (1936) and Cascadia (2020), Part 1 of 5
There is a story to things. This bluff above an old Nimiipu’u village site on the Snake River in Idaho has a story: Hells Gate State Park Note the Fall Rye planted […]
Big Black Bee
It’s a safe bet that this grassland bee didn’t evolve to harvest dandelion nectar. I’d say it’s improvising because its host is absent. A sitting duck for birds, too. Perhaps, though, it […]
Erosion Can be a Healing Force
The abandoned gravel pit. Note the erosion. Note how the rock is sorted down slope around a nascent stream channel. The clays have settled out of the water below where the land […]
Okanagan Okanogan 