If we call this wetland, runoff, mud, rot, ditch or swamp, we are talking about a social relationship to it, and not the thing itself. If we call the beautiful surface of […]
The Power of Words
Cultural Blindness and Agricultural Practice
Culture is a powerful thing. Here is some earth, laid bare by a plow, in preparation for seeding in the spring. In the past, it has been used to grow tomatoes. This […]
Who Loves Green Peppers Now?
Busted! The new landscaping staff stealing a bite at work on the front yard while I was up on the hill and teaching me again that an interface works both ways. Doe […]
Where the Woods Meet the Water
Yesterday, I mentioned that Naomi Klein’s critique of this past season of storms and fires missed a Cascadian perspective. Here’s one, from Shuswap Lake. Let me decode that. When one is of […]
Global Warming, Indigenous Culture and Industrial Nature
Please, forget carbon dioxide for just a minute, if you can. It’s a symptom, not a cause. There is worse. Nature in Canada This mule deer doe is trapped by fences on […]
Understanding Nature
This field of swiss grain above Lake Constance is a good example of the kind of conversations humans have with the earth. This represents technology brought from Asia to Europe and used […]
The World as a Decorative Object
Willow, Lake Constance Formal gardens transform the earth into a system of social arrangement. Relaxed gardens, the English gardens of the 18th and 19th centuries and their heirs, recreate this social arrangement […]
Nature and the Grave
Nature is a grave. That is an important point of Christianity, but not of the intermontane cultures of the North American West. What is in the grave is another matter. That is […]
What is Nature?
Stein am Rhein It is not to be confused with the Earth or the biosphere. That is to continue the white shaming of the earth that plagues North America. Sometimes “nature” is […]
Open and Closed Air in Indigenous Switzerland
In Zurich, this is nature. A sobering thought. Or, rather, it is a school sports field. Note the tree. It is placed where there is room. Note as well the aesthetic, architectural […]
