When the salmon of the Okanagan River come home over eleven dams on their year-long journey from Siberia… …they can’t spawn in their traditional home, the Skaha and Okanagan Lake Systems, because […]
No Place to Spawn
Thanksgiving Salmon
I give thanks that the salmon have returned from Siberia to the Okanagan River, after the longest journey of any salmon in the world… And I grieve that their journey ends abruptly […]
Wild Life on the Hanford Reach
Here is a basic guide to life in the Hanford Reach, the last free-flowing (note: not wild, just free flowing) stretch of the American stretch of the Columbia River. First, the security […]
There is No Such Thing as Wilderness (Unless We Make it So)
In a land that was heavily populated and culturally farmed for 6000 years, only in the last 160 years, the time of European, American and Canadian colonization, has there been wild life. […]
Cheating Weeds Out of their Day in the Sun
There is a new invader in the Okanagan and the Okanogan, our two homelands that are one. It is rush skeleton weed, and it has the potential to wreck stuff. Stuff like balers and […]
Sprouting a Future Without Water
This beautiful valley is running out of water. There are many culprits, and not all of them the usual suspects. Today, I’d like to talk about one small solution, which entails using […]
Writing on Rock
Writing about the culture that has come out of aboriginal-settler relationships in what is sometimes called the Late West, is a bit like peeling a layer off an onion, and there’s another […]
Fire in the Grass!
Bit of a grass fire here the other day. Young guy with a lighter. Wondered what it might do. Found out. Too many generations since there was fire here. Hard to remember to […]
Water, Wealth, and Poverty
Here’s what water looks like up in the hills: Wild Saskatoons in Full Fruit, Scotch Creek, Washington Saskatoons were once a major human food source in this area. Notice how the fruit […]
Global Cooling Part 2
Before I left for the last two weeks of travels through the deserts, mountains, and beaches of Washington, I began a discussion on global warming, which centred on water use in dryland […]
