A rose is a twig, a thorn, a leaf, a stem, a seed, seed fluff, bark, root, bud, wood and scent, and now, in early winter, the fruit. This is not, however, […]
The Tree Whisperer and the Rose
Pruning the Sun: The Intimate Relationship Between Fruit Trees and Words
Eighteen months ago, I showed you this image of a cherry tree in bloom. It was early in the pandemic and I was thinking of building a life that extended past it. […]
The Tree Whisperer: My New Book on the Poetry of Tree Pruning
This is a beautiful book, that holds 51 years of my personal tree pruning experience, and a few thousand years of ancestral experience behind it. This hand-made book is just out from […]
Grassland Education: Reducing Climate Risk 8
The Okanagan Valley is home to a nearly extirpated grassland ecosystem, that exists only in a few endangered pockets. Even so, it is a key grassland area for studying the effects of […]
Ten Years Into the Future: social and ecological sustainability in the Okanagan and British Columbia
This post is a sketch of a detailed, viable alternative to this document: There are solutions in this blog for every problem listed in this document, that avoid its high […]
The Wind and the Grass Taking a Deer for a Walk Among the Dead
Snow, then sun, then snow, then wind, then sun, with both wind and sun coming in at a low angle, but not too much sun, turns the bunchgrass into a series of […]
What if History Were Not Over? I Mean, for the Kids’ Sake
History is the study of what has happened in the past. But what if the Big Sage below, weighted with snow, were history instead? There comes a point where the inner heat […]
The Earth is Our Teacher, But What Does She Teach?
In school we were taught that a teacher was someone who showed us how things are in the world. Really, it was someone who gave us letters and a means of turning […]
Beauty, Renewal and the Salmon of Shuttleworth Creek in the Fight Against Global Warming
Shuttleworth Creek winds for many miles up through the antelope brush and bunchgrass, into the pine forest, and deep into the mountains, covered in firs. With a bed of complex gravels and […]
How Ecology Got Messed Up
This blog is about walking. Sometimes it’s about walking through myself, which is an environment and peering at stuff. A snake den, I suspect. I’m pretty sure (if I correctly remember the […]
Okanagan Okanogan 