Things are what they are. If you see in that image a boulder covered in two varieties of lichen, you are seeing words and the resonance they make when they draw on […]
Space, Place, Land and the Deceptions of Language
Fate Race and Populism in the Third Reich and Cascadia, Part 2 of 5
Yesterday, I took you to the Nimiipu’u and Yakama homelands, to show you the oldest inhabited region in the Americas, as an introduction to a discussion of fate and time and what […]
The Mingling Rivers of Life
Spring doesn’t come all at once. As this ravine in Vernon shows… “Spring” is the wrong concept entirely. Experience has to be selectively read in order for the concept to fit at all. […]
This Spiritual Land
The land is beautiful and sacred in these parts. It makes us want to enter it. John Day Painted Hills That’s because we are a migratory, hunting species, that responds both to […]
Slow Glaciers, Cows, Deer, Lichen and Poetry Making a New Hydrology Together
A mysterious rock near the top of the hill. Here’s the hill in the smoke last fall. Looks dry, huh. We’re going up to the top of the bare patch at the […]
Saying the Names Shanty & the CBC Poetry Prize
As some of you know, when I’m not exploring the poetry of the earth, I am working for the words as they arrange themselves in similar patterns, also called poetry. Today, I am […]
Post-Racial Geography, an Introduction
This is not indigenous land. This is one of the main spiritual centres of my country, the Similkameen Valley. To call it indigenous, or native, land, is to adopt the words that […]
The Snake and Turtle Trail
There is an ancient trail that comes in from spaxmən (Douglas Lake), crosses kɬúsx̌nítkw (Okanagan Lake) below, on the lower left … … and enters a tongue of land called “The Commonage”. The trail […]
Bringing the Salmon Home to sx̌ʷəx̌ʷnitkʷ
It is the time of the year when the sun ripens. Whether it is smooth sumac… … sedums storing sunlight during the day to eat it at night … … wild gooseberry […]
Where the Heart is Home: A Celebration
I love this land. I guess you know that. I am this land. Other writers might talk about identity and ego and alter ego and personality, but I just want to take you […]
