Every piece of the bark of a ponderosa pine fits together… and comes apart. It is a kind of hieroglyphic language — a special one, in which each word is unique and […]
Reading Trees
The Power of Opening
We are clematis. The rushing waters where the Pacific Ocean lifts to the sky and splashes down on rock sometimes look dry, scoured by the sky more than by water… … and […]
Beyond Settlement: Energy, Cascadia and the Portland Protests
Let’s look at energy by getting going. There is a way forward. You did not make it. No human made it, yet humans have followed it for, perhaps, 10,000 years. Deer made […]
Space, Place, Land and the Deceptions of Language
Things are what they are. If you see in that image a boulder covered in two varieties of lichen, you are seeing words and the resonance they make when they draw on […]
Fixer Upper in the Okanagan
With a little love, it could be a home again. The idea is that species like Western Bluebirds … … will maintain their presence in a grassland if bird houses are erected […]
The Fire Deficit and the Depth of Global Warming
For 10,000 years, the people of the grasslands have been living in a fire landscape. For 100 years, they have been living in a fire debt. This landscape: Selah Creek, Yakama Nation […]
Summer Draws to a Close in the Okanagan
When harvest season starts in the snow in late February, with crops planted in mid-August the year before, the valley’s true seasons reveal themselves quite simply. Spring, for instance, took place in […]
Roman Gardens in the Suburban Okanagan
Do you see a storm sewer This wild lettuce sees a future. Welcome to the qanat, the underground river drawing itself from stone, that the Romans spread across the Sahara and the […]
Wild Currants are Ready
What I love about Pacific wild currants is that they taste as dry as the land on a hot day. Their sweetness is pale and their juice minimal, and yet if you […]
Evolution in Action
Not all invasive species are trouble. When the land is stripped of life and turned into dust, cheatgrass and sagebrush, the swallowtails seek out alfalfa that has escaped from nearby farms. Western […]
Okanagan Okanogan 