Here’s an old word: illahie. Here’s what it looks like to me today: Well, that’s a teeny tiny bit of it. If you look it up in a Chinook Wawa dictionary… …the […]
The Illahie: the Braided Country
The Music of Bunch Grass
These are our old growth forests in the Syilx Illahie. Our sequoias, redwoods, Douglas firs, sitka spruce and western red cedars are blue-bunched wheat grass here. Forget the blue blades at the […]
Grass Bison Without Legs
The energy of the land comes forth in certain forms. Here in buffalo country in Montana, it’s up to its old tricks. Grass Bison! I know Montana is outside my homeland, but it’s […]
The Gatekeeper of Yellowstone
Although Yellowstone is not the park called Yellowstone and begins far outside of that art work, millions drive past the gatekeeper on their way to the art work’s entrance. Bad manners, I […]
The End of the Road of Diplomacy: the Bear Paw Battlefield
Here’s the Bear Paw Battlefield in the rain. It’s here that the hunt to eliminate a people from the face of the earth was called a war. It was just a hunt. […]
On My Way to Bearpaw
The sun came in under the clouds and illuminated the buffalo country. I felt the absence of the buffalo keenly. “Nature” seems to be no replacement.
Wild Crafting 101
To find currants in the crowded foliage of midsummer, just be there in the fall, long after the berries have gone to the birds. You’ll know where they are. Wild crafters know […]
Good Ideas Bear Repeating
Choke cherry. Starry False Solomon’s Seal. Only one is a tree.
Chopaka: the Holy Mountain
At the height of the Cascade Mountains, at the lip of the North Pacific Rainforest, two rivers rise: the Skagit, which flows on through a dam system to provide water for Seattle and seeps on through […]
Return to the Snake River at the End of Time
High above the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers, in the southeastern reach of my plateau homeland, the Camas Prairie catches the sky. The camas once bloomed in blue fields here. […]
Okanagan Okanogan 