I thought at first this bunchgrass was in such beautiful shape this spring because of a winter of voles fertilizing it while nesting in its thatch. Then I realized that it hasn’t […]
How to Turn the Okanagan Into a Desert
Social Closeness & Social Distance: the More-Than-Human Story
Let’s talk about the new geological age of the world, the Anthropocene, the “human epoch”, a time of extinctions and biosphere collapse driven by human activity. This doomsday scenario comes at the […]
When You Walk Through the Earth, She is Walking Through Herself
So many sacred spaces are heads. Now that the Earth has insistently re-entered human social lives, it might be best to get to know how to speak with her. Here are some […]
Noxious Weeds? Don’t be Silly.
The scotch thistle is listed as a noxious weed in the Okanagan. The image below shows it after the first year of is growth. Now it’s ready to grow a tall stalk. […]
Hope for the Earth: Settler Lessons from the Voles
The bunches grass bunches up. With the help of snow, it mounds. We could call it mound grass. We could call it a village. Note the vole highway in the lower centre […]
Race and Orcharding in British Columbia and Washington
This is the second of three posts about the costs of farming. This one is about the tangle between land and race. The next is about broader environmental and social factors. If […]
How Fences Change the Climate
Last week in Kelowna, I talked to a group gathered at the library about the price of fences, such as this ‘deer fence’ around an orchard in Vernon. Deer need to go […]
Sixty Things We Can Do to Help the Earth Right Now, Right Here
This is the second part of the answer to a question of how adopting Indigenous land use protocols can help the Earth. The first is here: The Price of De-Indigenizing the Land. […]
Red Power
Red is traditionally the colour of life and power. It is associated with blood. For this, a belief in the power of redness is scoffed at in scientific circles, in which it […]
The Old Year and the New Year Open As One in the Grass
When we see a head, the head sees us. Together we are a moment of seeing. Perhaps you are used to using the word “rock” for a head like this? Perhaps “boulder”? […]
Okanagan Okanogan 