Like the grass on the Big Bar Esker below, I don’t live in the straight beams of light. I live at the continuity of points of intersection with them, which bend in […]
At Home in the Earth Community
Of Universities and Love
Universities are the place in which Western societies educate their youth, create knowledge, and pass on social values. I wonder why that doesn’t happen here: The Salmon River Enters the Snake It […]
Return to the Snake River at the End of Time
High above the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers, in the southeastern reach of my plateau homeland, the Camas Prairie catches the sky. The camas once bloomed in blue fields here. […]
Spirit Eels in the Grassland
A few weeks back I went to Asotin, where the Moray eels used to come up from the sea to spawn. Chief Looking Glass’s camp was there, at the fishery. Here’s the […]
The Mystery of Buffalo Eddy
One of the significant and unique forms of rock art at Buffalo Eddy on the Snake River looks like this: A human figure with a triangular body. It looks like a buffalo […]
Matisse and the Nez Perce
Reading the sky, I’ve just realized, is not a matter of translating the dramatic movements of clouds and light into words or ideas, but reacting to them in the manner of responding […]
This is How You Make Bread and French Fries
First, you take the shrub steppe of the lower Snake River. Then you add petroleum-based fertilizer (white tank) and water (six deep well pumps). This combination makes bread. It’ll be seeded again in […]
Snake Leaves the Snake
To the Nimiipu, water was the strongest spiritual substance. Note that the snake that leaves the Snake River here at Buffalo Eddy, never arrives at the (older) shamanic figure. That’s because it’s […]
Eel and Turtle
This morning, I showed an image of the mouth of Asotin Creek, where the Moray Eels used to spawn in the Snake River grasslands, in the far west of Washington, before the […]
The Snake and the Eel
What is a river, then? It is a stream, a flow, a run, which gives a Rhine, a Rhone, a river and a row. But what is it, when those words aren’t […]
