I hate to say it, but the dream that has kept my family tied to the land for 91 years in this trough in the Columbia Plateau is over. Instead of a […]
The Only Hope for the Okanagan and Similkameen Valleys in a Culture of Fire
Roots Are Not Wood & Trees Are Communities of Water: What the Future Promises in the Fire Forest
This root may be exposed and, to all appearances, dead, yet it still holds up an old Douglas-fir into the sky. But that’s not the true beauty of it. I mean, look […]
The Fire is Us
There are fires in all directions, for the fourth year in a row. Note the smoke above, in the Okanagan, and below, in the Cariboo. Cough cough. There’s a lot of talk […]
Global Warming in Lytton, A Long View
We are all grieving, for people lost, lives damaged, and a beautiful town vanished from Cascadia. The scorching temperatures in Lytton this last week, and the horrible loss of the entire town […]
Let’s Help the Children Have a House to Live in
So, let’s say you’re 18 or 25 or 30 and need a place to live in the Okanagan. Where are you going to go? Here? Sorry, you can’t even afford the stone […]
Do Temporary Foreign Workers Feed the Okanagan?
I dunno. Here are some of these hardworking guys planting Frind’s industrial vineyard in Vernon. It’s hard to say, isn’t it. Wine, a tourist product, sold at about $22 a bottle, may […]
Communicating With Deer
Here’s the walking trail above the orchards west of my house in late winter. Notice how the path is as wide as a road, is packed down from human traffic, and is […]
One Hundred Years
A hundred years ago, it was the modern fashion in the US Okanogan to train two trunks from every apple root, at a narrow angle to each other. The practice died out […]
How People Learned to Stay Still: a Story Old and New
From many, one. From one, many. Just not all at once. Here is Siya? blooming: a cluster of white-petalled flowers catching the eye because so many are close together. Not all bloom […]
The Strange Little Man of the North Okanagan
A small white explorer discovering a vast, unknown land. And staying in that moment forever, while below him, people camp out in the remains of a wetland squeezed now between two highways. […]
Okanagan Okanogan 