Spinning like a top

Seems to be a week of afternoon thundershowers, but none on the north side of the lake have truly let loose so far. The views here are such that you can see whole systems of clouds hanging, and moving, over Mono, with trails or frills of rain sizzling to vapor far before they have a chance to hit the ground.

I was thinking, today, about how the phrase "in the distance" is so confused in the Basin. Black Point, with its fissured cap, is in the distance, but within reach of a run from home. The south shore is a 20 minute drive. The high Sierra over Mammoth Lakes is clear, crisp, most days, though its 40 miles distant. Unlike, say, in the forested suburbs of New England, here distance running is, visually, immensely satisfying (even the same loop looks dramatically different depending on how the light's playing on, landing on, various (mountain) ranges of distance), but it makes me feel like a top spinning on a vast, arid table. Multiple thunderheads vying, in their windy way, for position over the lake has the same, personally diminishing effect. It's easier to feel fast, and large, when you don't look up!

A short, loosely related story: yesterday, climbing back up to Mono City on the jeep trail that heads to Black Point (sorry, I really need to come up with nicknames for them all), I just happened to turn around, and there was a soft rainbow against the dark, vaguely mauve Nevada distance. It had materialized out of the low, lit blue sky that slipped between the crescent of rock and cloud at the head of Lundy Canyon (up from Mono City) just after 8 pm. I had been running away from it, and I may have never seen it, if not for a chance crane of the neck.

Anyways, coming into home, there was a neighbor standing in the sagebrush on the side of E. Mono Lake Drive with a camera looking in the direction from which I'd come. I glanced back to see the bend of colors, but they were gone.

"Did you get the rainbow?" I asked. "Barely," he said. I nodded, and thought to myself, "Me too."

Something else, to finish: I passed a FedEx tractor trailer on the mile of 395 I ran today (rather, it passed me, emphatically). I speculate it was the very same truck, and driver, at the same hour, as yesterday, on its daily route--something you could set your timepiece to, should the sun be obscured. Presumably he wasn't hauling the same goods, though--at least, not the very same.

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9 mi, 63 min; Conway Ranch-Hwy 167 loop, slightly abbreviated, for lack of energy (and sleep last night)

Also: An HCN blog post on wolves in Oregon: Jumping (to) the gun

Paving the way

I’ve been thinking about roads lately, and for a long time. For running, I’ve come to realize, is largely about them. At least in the modern world. Often what I see, and think about, while on the jog, is no further than their shoulders.

~

This evening, at the tail end of some thunderstorms, I set off on the sandy jeep trail on the bluff south of Mono City, across Mill Creek. I had some idea where it would take me. My notion turned out not to be wrong, just far more efficient.

I started heading East, but the road had a mind of its own and turned in large arc across a flat, ancient lake bed, back toward 395, passing a bounding mule deer in the greasewood, and a pile of bleached bones in a shallow, unnoticed wash. Eventually it sidled up to the fence aside the great avenue of mountains, and commerce, that is 395.

Aside this nameless road, 395 is monumental, in every way. So wide and loud. An impassable river, to some animals, I bet. A place where the Sierra’s wind is subsumed, at least on occasion, by that of trucks. And to think 395 was once a jeep trail—a wagon road.

~

What I'll remember from this run, I think, is that, at the apex of this nameless road, I watched a FedEx truck roll down the grade of the highway in the distance. Or rather, it seemed to slide down the sage horizon. The semi’s white shape was striking, small and pill-like, before the looming, irregular foothills that ascend to the Mt. Warren. And its purple Fed and green Ex reminded me of the lupine I had to dodge constantly, because they were colonizing the road under my feet.

~

Have you ever noticed the arrow hidden in FedEx? Look closely. And what to make of the fact that it points in the direction opposite its travels?

~

Around here, it seems, lupine is the first to reclaim. In a burn area off the shoulder of 395 near June Lake, lupine sprawls. It’s a regal carpet. And further on, when I left the 4WD trails for Cemetery Road, there was lupine, still on the shoulder, though this road is graded yearly I suspect.

In spots, it had crept forward, a small animal that had dashed out, then suddenly stopped in tracks. And I thought to myself, I bet they’re spared by dirt road drivers, who surely like to squash things, because they’re so colorful. For some drivers, perhaps it's only subconscious.

~

Lupine is a conqueror, I've learned, not just of roads. It handles stress, and is the first, relative simple wave of sage-steppe.

On the skirt of Mount Saint Helens, a similar environment in many ways to this volcanic basin, it was discovered that lupine inhibit the growth of other seedlings, but that those others that take hold ultimately do unusually well, because lupine plumbs the soil with nitrogen.

In other words, it hogs the road initially, but paves the way.

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10 mi, 70 min; Mono City-Cemetery Road loop via unnumbered road