Above Summerland

There are landscapes we carry inside us long after we leave them, places we assume will always be there waiting for us.

The Okanagan Valley is one of those places for me. Last summer, I brought my daughters back there. Then the highway closed, the smoke descended, and a familiar landscape suddenly became something else.

“Above Summerland, My Daughters Saw Everything but the Sky” is about that morning, about memory, fatherhood, climate change, and what it means to return home when the place you remember is changing faster than your memories of it.

I’m very pleased to have the essay in the Literary Review of Canada, and especially grateful for the wonderful response it has received.