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Reclaiming the Art of Living on the Earth

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Getting Our Land Back from the Pacific Northwest
What If We Stopped Reading Books?
Please, Please, Please Don't Plant That Lavender!
The Weave of the Earth (Poetry in the Modern World Part 2)
Ponderosa Pine's World
The Illahie: the Braided Country
The Pacific Northwest is Not the Southwest
We Got This Wrong
Rocky Mountains Go Home Now, Eh
Placer Mining the Grasslands

Reading the Language of the Land

By Harold Rhenisch on May 21, 2018 • ( 4 Comments )

Imagine writing a language that meets the shape of the land. It is built on deep bones, such as the Arrowstone volcanic flows below: both vertical and horizontal at the same time, […]

100,000 Times You Have Knocked on My Door and I Have Opened It

By Harold Rhenisch on May 18, 2018 • ( 14 Comments )

Thank you! A few minutes ago, this project that I began in the fall of 2011 has seen its 100,000th visitor: not 100,000th page view or click, but, well, you. You have […]

Habitat for Great Horned Owls

By Harold Rhenisch on May 18, 2018 • ( 7 Comments )

In Vernon, trees planted fifty years ago are getting to be old growth now. Perfect to settle into. There’s Mom in back. And here’s the nest that Robin built when he heard […]

How to Create Floods in Indigenous Space

By Harold Rhenisch on May 17, 2018 • ( 2 Comments )

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has just published an article called “Fraser Valley threatened by flooding.” You can have a gander at it here.    The Fraser River at Chilliwack Source I feel for […]

Silliness under the Great Waterfall of Sx̌ʷəx̌ʷnitk ʷ

By Harold Rhenisch on May 16, 2018 • ( 2 Comments )

When a continent and a seafloor collide and crack to pieces, so the seafloor buckles and the earth cracks open …   …the earth goes vertical instead of heading for Japan … … […]

More Climate Change Lessons from the Okanagan

By Harold Rhenisch on May 15, 2018 • ( 2 Comments )

Problem: Petroleum Mucking up the Air? Solution: De-muck it. How: Plant a tree. The image below shows City of Vernon land used as a road to access a water pumping station. The […]

First Steps to Mitigate Global Warming in the Okanagan Okanogan Today

By Harold Rhenisch on May 15, 2018 • ( 2 Comments )

PROBLEM: Climate change accelerates atmospheric heating. Red-Tailed Hawks in Tkem’lips STRATEGY: Don’t panic! The heating is caused by the mountains and by air pressure. Thompson Grasslands SOLUTION: Plant a tree. A good […]

Junked Cars and Apricot Trees and the “News”

By Harold Rhenisch on May 14, 2018 • ( 2 Comments )

Apricot trees and land barges,  these relics from my youth, go so well together, don’t you think. It was the age when you had a choice: to drive or to set down […]

Attracting Predators to Your Organic Orchard

By Harold Rhenisch on May 13, 2018 • ( 2 Comments )

Beats applying chemicals. Yarrow under the apple trees is great for predatory wasps. Highly recommended. Catnip grows well under there, too. For predatory wasps and for my pruning buddy, boots. You can […]

The Year of the Kazillion Cherries Has Begun

By Harold Rhenisch on May 11, 2018 • ( Leave a comment )

When I pruned these trees, the wind was kaboodling down the Similkameen Valley like a grizzly bear made of dry ice. Sawdust was falling in my face from my saw. My feet […]

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The Okanagan in History: Table of Contents

This is a Blog about People in Place

I have worked here since 2011 telling stories of the Earth as preparation for a history of the Intermontane Grasslands of Central Cascadia and the rainswept coast that keeps them windy and dry. Now I am presenting this history, step by step, as I have learned it, often from the land itself. The history of this region includes the Canadian colonial space “The Okanagan Valley”, which lies over the land I live in above Canim Bay. The story stretches deep into the American West, into the US Civil War, the War of 1812, and the Louisiana Purchase, as well into the history of the Columbia District of the Hudson’s Bay Company. In all, the story spans the Chilcotin and Columbia volcanic plateaus and the basins that surround them. In this vast watershed lie homelands as old as 13,200 years (Sequim) and 16,200 years (Salmon River.) That’s how far we are walking together here, who are all the land speaking.

https://okanaganokanogan.com/harold-rhenischs-shop/ Click to buy my new book The Tree Whisperer, an extension of Thoreau's Wild Apples and a book about learning to write poetry by pruning fruit trees. Only Olaf Hauge, from Norway, and I have followed such a path.
  • Getting Our Land Back from the Pacific Northwest
  • What If We Stopped Reading Books?
  • Please, Please, Please Don't Plant That Lavender!
  • The Weave of the Earth (Poetry in the Modern World Part 2)
  • Ponderosa Pine's World
  • The Illahie: the Braided Country
  • The Pacific Northwest is Not the Southwest
  • We Got This Wrong
  • Rocky Mountains Go Home Now, Eh
  • Placer Mining the Grasslands

Jesmond Mountain, Where the Coast and the Grasslands Meet

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This is a blog about living in place.

News, politics, art, literature, commentary, and happenings of importance to the watershed and path of the Okanagan River, no matter how far it flows.
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