The Okanagan Valley in which I live is sold as a place of beauty and purity in the midst of a wilderness. This project has been underway for about 125 years. The […]
Let’s Not Be Too Romantic Now
The Many are One and the One is Many
The concept of many… … is also the concept of one. All see. This “seeing” is not the “seeing of the human eye” or the “insight in the mind that is the […]
No Metaphors, Please
Visually, an á, a flow that carries a distant watering and extends it laterally across space… aka The Thompson River …is the same as the Grey Canal Trail below, with its new […]
Reading Balsam Root, Writing Earth, Reading Mind
Here’s a word. Don’t let abstraction fool you. Just be with her for a moment. As you can see, she’s a living creature. Don’t let her dead stalks fool you. Because they’re […]
Shadows, Holes, Poetry and the Art of Speaking as the Earth
Last night I wrote a post and then deleted it by trying to save some notes for today, which seemed clever, but was just, well, not. Let’s have a look state of […]
Magpie’s Thoughts on Land Claims
Middle Class Country: an American pop culture project. Dude Ranch Country: an older American pop culture project. Spiritual Country: a Chinese-European folk cultural project. Artistic Country: an American cultural export installation. […]
How to Make a City Indigenous, Even if You’re Lazy, Eh
Let’s go downtown as if we lived here. Let’s look at Canada through the lens of the story it tells in the Syilx illahie (illahie is Pacific Slope trade jargon for “story” […]
A Home In the Earth and the Sun: The Beginnings of an Urban Blueprint
I’ve been staring at this beaver lodge for years. Big Bar Creek I thought at first, well, yes, it’s a good model for a house. And sure enough, the Secwepemc who are this land […]
Dryland Wetland: Holding Water in Plain Sight
Every year 383 millimetres of water fall on this stretch of the Thompson River. Every year 383 millimetres of water fall on this land above it. That’s a third of a metre. That’s […]
Getting Used to Living in Time (The Intimate Lives of Rocks and Grass)
Let’s read a common thing … … in its context. Grass. It’s green and blows in the wind. It bends and sways, this one. It… clumps. West Arrowstone Deer wander through it. […]
Okanagan Okanogan 