The mountains have bloomed for Easter. Beautiful Arrow-leafed Balsam Root! Beats me why the whole city doesn’t shut down and take to the hills. And yet, for all that gorgeous display, the […]
Beauty and the Feast
The Many Faces of Smúkwaʔxn, or The Birth of the Sun
Arrow-Leafed balsam root (smúkwaʔxn) has her private moments. Here, she is bringing a crop of suns out of the earth. Smúkwaʔxn has her public moments, too. The suns are mature a couple days […]
Climate, Wild Harvest and Human Life as Environments
More important as a food crop than the pretty yellow bell lily … …is desert parsley. She’s cream-coloured… … with short flower stalks, or tall ones… … or purple, when still half-closed… […]
The First Petal of the First Blossom of the Sun
It’s a good day for arrow-leafed balsam roots. They have come fast (in two days). If you hurry, there’s still time for some fine steamed sprouts. Their menthol flavour is not yet […]
Reading Spring Together in Deep Summer
The way that the stalks of smúkwaʔxn… … fall and dry tells us of the weather and how water is passing through the soil as does the sound of our footsteps through […]
Quick Light, Slow Light, Great Two-Sided Heart
The billions of years that are the intersection of Sun and Earth, which are all present at once and opening around us, can be viewed as new, arising in an instant and […]
Just a Mouthful, Thank You Very Much
Big sunflowers are for the birds and big apes, eh. But small ones, the gloriously misnamed arrow-leafed balsam root, are for tiny birds, who peck the tiny seeds, and deer, who munch […]
Outliers in a Web of Interwoven Worlds
The arrow-leafed balsam root is a great world for crab spiders, wasps, flies and bees, and blooms across the hills in the spring, one of the few native plants that can resist […]
Thinking With the Balsam Roots as they Flower
The way to merge with the Earth for improved thinking is both obvious and hidden, and that depends on who you are. A standard way in contemporary Western culture is to make […]
The Beautiful Angles of the Grassland, or Baby, We Love You for More than Your Curves
Those of us who talk about grasslands, talk about their rounded curves a lot. Hey, Glaciers, thanks for that. This is a land held in tension against wind and light, using opposition […]
