Water makes circles and spheres. Ancient glacial rivers made these. And they slow water down today. Note how the bare soil doesn’t. Amazing!.
Why It’s Called a Grassland
Look what happens! The grass grows, and dries in the sun, to catch the snow. No snow. A raven, though! But look… … then it snows. Now the grass is bent in […]
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 […]
Replacing Wild Harvest With Mountain Culture
100 Sustainable Paths for the Okanagan: 19 Currently, agriculture in the Okanagan Valley is industrial, in keeping with colonial models from 1858, when water was diverted through Nlaka’pamux villages in the Fraser […]
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 […]
American Dipper Among the Salmon
This is the bird that weaves the worlds of water, air and stone. It walks into the water and out of it again. To Dipper, these worlds are one. Deep under the […]
Our Ancestors Are Not All Human. Neither Are We.
The salmon come home, but they do not come home alone. Sure, they have each other … … but that’s not what I mean. They come home to the ancestors. Have a […]
Forest Salmon in the Salmon Forest
In a trickle of water among the ferns among the roots of a red cedar tree high above San Josef Bay, … a tiny salmon lives out its first year, hunting insects […]
The Heart of the Shuswap
Some rocks are sacred. The twins that allow water to reveal its spirit. The two halves of the heart. And what a spirit! Spirit on spirit on spirit. This red blood. The […]
Salmon Coming Home to the Rain
Chinook Salmon, Stamp River, Cascadia 17.9.17 A half hour after the skies broke at last with rain.

