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Reclaiming the Art of Living on the Earth

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Getting Our Land Back from the Pacific Northwest
The Pheasants are Messing With You (and the Coyotes, Too)
Ponderosa Pine: The Tree at the Heart of a People
5. A Second Woman and Her Dowry
Ten New Commercial Fruit Crops for the Okanagan
49. Pierre's Hole, Part 1
The Day the Sky Came Down to Earth
The Organic Machine
Bald Eagles Flirting in the Okanagan
Settler Culture? I Dunno. Ask Dickens.

Making the Future

By Harold Rhenisch on October 12, 2012 • ( Leave a comment )

Here’s the old story:  Indigenous peoples lived for thousands of years in the West, surviving by hunting and gathering, often in abject poverty, until settlers came from the United States, Canada, and […]

Look Both Ways!

By Harold Rhenisch on October 11, 2012 • ( Leave a comment )

Brought a friend home from the road beside the hawthorns. Last spring, he neglected to look left and right. Sheesh. Magpie, Disassembled I hate it when my friends get like this. Still, […]

Ripening the Sun

By Harold Rhenisch on October 11, 2012 • ( Leave a comment )

A friend asked how I knew when my green zebra tomatoes were ripe, when I’d never grown them before and they were green when they began and green when they ended. Good […]

No Place to Spawn

By Harold Rhenisch on October 9, 2012 • ( Leave a comment )

When the salmon of the Okanagan River come home over eleven dams on their year-long journey from Siberia… …they can’t spawn in their traditional home, the Skaha and Okanagan Lake Systems, because […]

Thanksgiving Salmon

By Harold Rhenisch on October 9, 2012 • ( 2 Comments )

I give thanks that the salmon have returned from Siberia to the Okanagan River, after the longest journey of any salmon in the world… And I grieve that their journey ends abruptly […]

That Old Watery Moon: A Year of Walking and Learning

By Harold Rhenisch on October 5, 2012 • ( Leave a comment )

Moon’s hanging around all day now. Frost in the tomatoes by the lower fence. Potatoes in the cellar. Light everywhere. Earth and Moon with Human Signature Humans are life. They love views […]

Ethics

By Harold Rhenisch on October 4, 2012 • ( 3 Comments )

Water and land are common resources. In terms of Common Law, that means that they belong to the people, all of the people, all of the time. Governments, which come and go […]

A Year of Walking and Learning, Part 4

By Harold Rhenisch on October 3, 2012 • ( Leave a comment )

This is the fourth post in which I unravel a year long walkabout into threads, in preparation for weaving them together into book form, not to mention a presentation next week for […]

A Year of Walking & Learning Part 3

By Harold Rhenisch on October 2, 2012 • ( 1 Comment )

My walkabout in the last year has led through the fields of industry, innovation, and education. What I have found comes from observing the earth. Its raw materials are gravity, rock, the […]

A Year of Walking and Learning, Part 2

By Harold Rhenisch on October 1, 2012 • ( 1 Comment )

Welcome to the second summary of the first year of my explorations in revisioning the goals of literature and the relationship of place and environment in the dry country east of the […]

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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
  • The Pheasants are Messing With You (and the Coyotes, Too)
  • Ponderosa Pine: The Tree at the Heart of a People
  • 5. A Second Woman and Her Dowry
  • Ten New Commercial Fruit Crops for the Okanagan
  • 49. Pierre's Hole, Part 1
  • The Day the Sky Came Down to Earth
  • The Organic Machine
  • Bald Eagles Flirting in the Okanagan
  • Settler Culture? I Dunno. Ask Dickens.

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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