When plants left the sea for the air… … they didn’t. We live in an intertidal zone. Ah, here comes the first breaker of the tide now… Here’s the surf rolling East […]
The Tides Wash Over Turtle Mountain
The Field of Life
Water flows in a film over rock. When it strikes dry faces, it breaks into rivers. Then it reforms and becomes a lake again. It is a story of water tension and […]
The New Year Begins in Its Own Sweet Time
About a week ago, really. It’s quite settled in now and has its eye on us. And at the very last, the old year shows us her hidden beauty. And her new […]
Guardian of the Ancient Trail
Here’s a trail leading from an ancient camp at the foot of a mysterious canyon complex crisscrossed by deer trails, cool with water in a hot land, and sprouting berries and herbs. […]
Our Mother’s Bones
There is ancient stone. There are dead (grey) lichens, thriving orange and yellow ones, and some green ones doing very well. There are flakes of stone that have broken off, scattering the […]
Indigenous or Non-Indigenous? A Field Guide.
To be Indigenous means you come from the land, and are of the land. This land, for example. This is an outcropping on Turtle Ridge in Vernon. Note the red lichen stains. […]
Christmas Rejoicing on Turtle Mountain
Let us praise even the cold. The terrible, iron cold. Let us give way and accept the story no more … … that the cold holds the land in its grip. […]
High Canopy Sagebrush Forest
Size is relative. Grasslands are forests, too. They only appear short because we walk in the sky.
Gravity Pools
Soil. Not soil. 9 years, nothing growing yet. Soil Not soil. Nothing even germinates here. Soil. You find soil where water pools. (Rocks, too.) It is life — a gravitational effect that […]
The Difference Between Earth, Soil and Dirt
Rock falls are earth. They power complex communities. Beautifully. They speak of gravity and sun and air, and bring them to life. Soil is what water leaves. Dirt is tillage. It is time […]
