Review and an Adventure: A Season in the Okanagan by Bill Arnott

A Season in the Okanagan by Bill Arnott

My Quick Take: A worthy companion book to read and use as you travel through British Columbia’s Okanagan region. Or, if you’re not yet planning a trip there, it may inspire you to go!

Thanks to Rocky Mountain Books for a gifted copy.

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It’s a great thing when the right book lands in one’s hands at the perfect time. I had planned a short road trip from Vancouver to Alberta with my daughter, over two nights. Bill Arnott’s newest book A Season in the Okanagan provided the perfect excuse to divert from the more travelled Coquihalla highway eastbound from Hope, BC to Alberta and instead take the road slightly less travelled through British Columbia’s Okanagan region.

Hoodoos, Outside Penticton
(Art courtesy of Bill Arnott)

A Season in the Okanagan was a great travelling companion. Physically, it’s a compact book, perfect for travelling. You can conveniently stash it in your travel backpack, purse or glove compartment for easy reference. The other notable feature is the amazing art on the cover, and presented throughout the book. It’s original to Arnott: he takes photographs and then digitally paints them. They are both inviting and striking and add a ton of interest to the book. Some remind me of Van Gogh; vivid blues and yellows dominate.

The book is presented as a travel memoir. Arnott was raised in Vernon, and that’s where his Introduction begins. He visits himself as a young boy, with vivid memories of lake swimming, picking cherries (and anticipating the tang of cherry juice: “He can taste it already, filling his small body with pleasure.”), and hummingbirds. These motifs thread throughout the book as the adult Arnott spends a season in the Okanagan.

Apple orchard, outside Summerland
(Art courtesy of Bill Arnott)

The season Arnott chooses to spend in the Okanagan is late summer turning to autumn. He gives lots of space to Indigenous ways of knowing, and I particularly liked learning about the Sylix of the Okanagan Nation, “a tribe spanning the 49th parallel in multiple Bands, sharing common culture, customs, and the nsyilxcən language.” He introduces the Four Syilx Food Chiefs: Bitterroot (spitlem), the spring Chief; Saskatoon Berry (síyaʔ), the summer Chief; Chief Salmon (n’tyxtix) of the autumn; and Black Bear (Skemxist), the winter Chief. “Within each season an inherent awareness of surroundings, from the ground–above and below–to bodies of water and sky. An almost circadian rhythm as it pertains to an annual cycle, a tidal ebb-flow in the pulse of the planet.”

This is a combination of guide book, natural history instructional, and memoir, and it comes together organically. At times the book is a sightseeing guide, but that alternates with Arnott’s brand of internal monologue: short sentences that present almost a stream of consciousness feel. It works! As I travelled, I’d read the relevant section before I arrived at my planned destination. One feature I would have welcomed is a concise index at the back of the book to quickly look up destinations and notable features in the region for quick reference.

Our trip took us from Vancouver via the Trans-Canada Highway to Hope, then via Highway 3 and 3A (beautiful driving!) to Highway 97 north, which marked our entry into the Okanagan. We spent a night in Penticton, then drove north with Lake Okanagan to our right. We crossed the lake from West Kelowna to Kelowna. Stopping for lunch there, we saw a couple of sights, then drove north (now with Lake Okanagan on our left) to Sicamous, the northern boundary of the region. It was a quick visit, but it covered new ground for me. I’ve been to Okanagan Falls and probably Penticton when I was a kid, but never to Kelowna or northwards. After that, we spent a night in Golden, BC–no longer in the Okanagan–and onwards through the Rockies to Alberta.

Giant peach in Rotary Park, Penticton

SS Naramata, Penticton

We arrived in Penticton in the late afternoon. Standing on the southernmost beach of Lake Okanagan gazing north with the arid hills rising on each side of the glass-like lake surface was breathtaking. I could have spent an hour contemplating the view. We found the two sister ships that plied the lake in days past, now beached and displayed at the edge of the lake: the S.S. Naramata and the S.S. Sicamous. Writes Arnott: “Now, the Naramata and the Sicamous sit side by side, labelled sister ships, grande dames admiring the view. I almost see them as Statler and Waldorf, the elderly Muppets who heckle performers from the comfort of their balcony seats.” However, as we stood beside them, they didn’t give a peep!

SS Sicamous, Penticton

Near dusk, my daughter and I drove up into the hills as instructed by Arnott’s book, searching out the iconic PENTICTON sign, constructed from small silica stones in a concrete frame. “The pebble construction was first built in 1937, maintained ever since by volunteers, who’ve now hauled some 20,000 kilos of small white stones up the hill. The visual is arresting. And prideful. Not quite even. But lovely in its obliqueness.” We ended up in the cemetery, where we got an obscured view of the sign. Never mind, though, because we heard a “hoo-hoo” birdcall, and saw an amazing owl in one of the cemetery trees. It was magical, and my daughter's first ever owl sighting. The next morning, driving out of town, we finally caught a good glimpse of the Penticton sign.

After a beautiful drive, we lunched in Kelowna, opting to eat in the downtown waterfront park, mostly so we could sit on the very cartoonish statue of Ogopogo. I climbed up on it and posed for the camera: I make no apologies and have no regrets, though I'll keep the picture to myself. But the playground-like structure does illustrate the vast difference between the Indigenous understanding of the Lake Spirit of Lake Okanagan, and the settler myth. “From the Syilx perspective, the name of the Spirit is nxaxaitkw (pronounced n-ha-ha-it-koo), the sacred identity that protects the water and the valley…But the legend goes deeper, to the symbiosis of ecosystems, people and land, the lake itself being vital. The imperativeness of maintaining clean water, balancing harvests with preservation.” Conversely, it was stories of missing horses and sightings of mysterious creatures that “perpetuated a Eurocentric notion of a slithery monster living deep in the lake,” Arnott writes.

Our trip complete, we returned to the Lower Mainland. I sat and read the book from beginning to end, and it’s totally worth doing. What makes this much more than a travel guide is Arnott’s personal recollections, the stories he tells, the locals he talks to, and the gradual transition from summer to fall as he sojourns. Having it as a companion to my short vacation enriched my experience of the destination. I’m left longing for more lingering days in the Okanagan. I jotted down places I’d like to visit, like Naramata and Wood Lake; and things I’d like to try, particularly the wonderful cherry juice you can buy from roadside stands. Once you read A Season in the Okanagan, I suspect you may be making travel plans too.

Penticton waterfront