Today, sober reflection. Tomorrow, a celebration. Kind of a small difference, eh. When the 5,000-year-old rattlesnake den on the hill was blasted away to make room for the luxury view homes the […]
Cultural Evolution in a Post-Canadian Landscape
Reading the Language of the Land
Imagine writing a language that meets the shape of the land. It is built on deep bones, such as the Arrowstone volcanic flows below: both vertical and horizontal at the same time, […]
Silliness under the Great Waterfall of Sx̌ʷəx̌ʷnitk ʷ
When a continent and a seafloor collide and crack to pieces, so the seafloor buckles and the earth cracks open … …the earth goes vertical instead of heading for Japan … … […]
The Earth Answers Every Question Beautifully and New
If you go to the Earth in the Thompson Valley… and ask for water… … she will give you an answer. It will, however, be in the language of the earth: a […]
The Dry Dry Earth of Home
It would be nice to think of water soaking into the soil, and all that ground below us being recharged with rain and draining down to the lake and cycling around. The […]
Happy New Year to You As We Surf Among the Blue Herons
There are a series of giant stone heads laid along the east coast of Vancouver Island just north of the Salish Sea. As the new year comes in, they are great for […]
Qanats for the Okanagan
Late afternoon in the grasslands. November. Light’s almost gone. Cloud everywhere. Nothing much to look at here. Zzzz. Or, maybe there is. Have a look just down the trail. The guys building […]
The Power of Names and Stories
Take this (no name, please)… See that rock in back there? That’s this (below, centre of image, again no name, please.): Now, look at the name it is unofficially known by (Sorry. […]
Practical Ways to Re-Indigenize the Grasslands. Really.
Two days ago, I suggested that the former grassland hillsides of the Okanagan Valley (now large, private expanses of unproductive and water-wasting weeds), an area at least equal to the 100s of […]
The Salt-Loving Bees of the Okanagan’s Glacial Rivers
When glaciers lay in the valley, rivers ran along the side of the ice, high up, 170 metres above today’s shore. They tell a tale still of eddies, currents, and washed-out and […]
Okanagan Okanogan 