It has been a year now since I started walking into the hills with my camera as a way to write two books: one about energy and the land, and the other […]
A Year of Walking and Learning
Stopping a River Dead in Its Tracks
When Jonathan Schell published his anti-nuclear argument, The Fate of the Earth, in 1982, one of his main arguments against nuclear proliferation was that the destruction of life on earth would render all life […]
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 […]
The Science Fiction Universe
A river isn’t exactly water. Sometimes it’s this: Some of the 2004 Process Tubes on the Front Face of B Reactor in Hanford An excellent way to turn a river into […]
Just the Right Number of Trees
In the grasslands, one is enough. One Ponderosa Pine Perfect It gives ants a world, lightning a chance to grab onto something (lightning likes that), deer a dry bed, and birds a […]
Returning from the Fire
The fire burns through, turning the land to dust and ash, and then, a month later, at the end of summer, it’s spring. Bunchgrass Coming Back All I can say is, it […]
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 […]
Oops a Daisy
In books, irony is delightful. In the world, not always quite so much. As I pointed out a couple weeks back, a new biological weapon against Spotted Knapweed, the plant that Satan […]
For the Love of Weeds
There is a group of plants that produce food, require little or no irrigation, little care, and are open to be shared by human and animal grazers. They are called weeds. They […]
Okanagan Okanogan 