Category Archives: Nature

Like the changing of the year, the transition of the seasons makes for a good time to reflect: to sweep out the old and make way for new growth. That thought led me to dig out some old autumn photos from the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden Mount Tomah , in NSW Australia. One of the sites […]

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Haida Gwaii, an archipelago off the northwestern coast of Canada’s British Columbia (BC), is a land of tall trees. And stories. The more I walked through the quiet and magical woods, and the more I learned about the mythical stories that originate here, the more enchanted I became. Haida Gwaii truly got under my skin! […]

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(Click to start Cedar Sister by Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson.) In the Haida worldview, the cedar tree is known as “every woman’s sister”, providing for and sustaining our existence. This ancient sister lies at the root of Haida culture. She permeates every facet of Haida life, beginning in the cradle and continuing to the grave and finally, […]

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We were in the doldrums. Quite literally. For three days, we chugged along slowly, never much more than a few degrees off the equator. Our last stop in ‘civilization’ had been in the village of Kwatisore on Cenderawasih Bay (see: Kwatisore Bay and Village). Fortunately, unlike the ancient mariners of poems, tales, and old history […]

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There is magic in the rocks and trees of Haida Gwaii in Canada’s British Columbia (BC). The people of the Haida Nation have lived here for at least 13,000 years – although ninety percent of the population died in the 1800s from smallpox, thanks to the first European contact in 1774. The islands were important […]

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