The fruit that this rich land produces is dependent upon mining the water resources that used to flow down from the hills. As a result of the corresponding loss of spawning channels […]
Wild Harvest
Choke
When I was a boy in the Similkameen, we were told that choke cherries would, well, choke you. Fruit that grew wild on the land was, we were told, poisonous. Sigh. Such words are […]
Water, Water, Water
In a near-desert landscape, no claim to the land is worth anything if it isn’t also a claim to the water. It’s a truism about First Nations Land Claims. It’s the same […]
The Mystery of the Birds Deepens
On Saturday, I pointed out that the birds and bears are absent from the north end of Okanagan Lake. About a hundred miles to the south, it is a different story: Elderberries […]
Golf
Driving and a golf ball around eighteen holes is a complex kind of mathematics. It takes so much time to get around the course, measured in so and so many strokes at […]
Wild Apples
The American natural philosopher Henry David Thoreau died of tuberculosis in May, 1862. He lived to see the apples bloom that year and begin to swell into fruit, but not to mature […]
Food and Industry
Here’s an example of what can happen when a horticultural industry is replaced by a technological one: Hanford, Washington The plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb was created on the Columbia, in the […]
Health
Stand Off at The Dalles, Oregon Just one of the nine major dams NK’mip salmon jump on their long swim home. Two technologies draw their identity from the same river. One is […]
The Kids are Alright
I suggested that rather than being divided, culture today is unified. Since the kids are our future, let’s have a look at their rites of initiation into adulthood. First, a campground bonfire […]
The Big Picture
The big picture is vast and complex. Maybe not. Take a look. Mullein Overlooking Bella Vista and the Commonage Hint: the Mullein is not a weed here. It is a native plant […]
Okanagan Okanogan 