Imagine if hills were opened to create this instead of roads or shopping malls. Drilled and blasted bedrock in a quarry, with a limestone spring from the seabeds high above, a young […]
Better Than a Zen Garden
An Anthropocene Idyll in the Okanagan Petro State
Ah, lunchtime in the park. The joys of nature in the beautiful Okanagan Valley.Sure. New word: anthrobscene. (You know, you might disagree with me on that, but, really, if this is what […]
What Do You Call a Photograph When It’s Not Made With Light?
Photography: writing with light. A more anglo-saxon suggestion is sun print. There’s more to them than prints on paper. See that? That snow buckwheat is light written or (im)printed on metamorphic bedrock, or, actually, […]
Winter is Here
It’s not just that winter is coming. Its first breath is as much winter as its depths. We remember ourselves in it. We rise up out of the grass.
Teaching Gravity in a 21st Century Classroom
First, two pictures of gravity. I don’t mean the effects of gravity. I mean gravity. Gravity is not mathematics. It’s either here in these pine cones or it doesn’t exist. Water carries […]
It’s Mango Time!
We love you, stag horn sumac. But we love you, smooth sumac more. Oh, Staghorn, you come from Virginia. You knew Hiawatha in your youth. But smooth sumac, daughter […]
When Trees are Weeds
This is an old growth forest full of weeds. The sage brush is the weed … … not the bunch grass. Sagebrush is an indigenous plant, but it comes in a bit thickly when […]
What We Need to Talk About, Darling
The land I live on was an island that crashed into a continent. It buckled and smashed and was pushed up into the air by the collision. The old seabeds of its […]
Who is a Person?
Oh, here’s a person: Your writer says hi. When you get a whole bunch of persons together you get people. Like this: Plateau Men Fishing, Celilo Falls on the Columbia River, c.1950 […]
Creating a Science That Includes the Earth
Science is a powerful tool. It’s built on a couple of foundational principles: 1. there is someone watching, 2. only what that person sees can be studied, and 3. only what is […]
Okanagan Okanogan 