At last, not one, but two

At the modest hour of 9:30 this morning, I drove up 120 to Poole Power Plant Road, parked at Aspen Campground, and jogged through Lee Vining Canyon to the dead end at the Southern Edison generation station. Oh shade, I always forget how I had miss thee amid the base, groveling sage! (That's not fair, I know.) I felt downright stealthy slipping along in the mottled lee of aspen and a jolt of delight climbing the cool, prostrate, drawnout shadow of a humongous ponderosa up the pavement. It's a stellar stretch that follows Lee Vining Creek--full of Pooles, indeed. (The anglers knew.) Hard to believe I've never fished around up there, really, til now.

It was only two miles to the power plant and back, so I kept going the other direction past Aspen Campground on PPP Road before turning around to make it nine miles ultimately.

And then ... ten hours later, I went for my first "double" since college. Now, that's saying something. That's ambition, for me. I toured/tooled around the sage roads and gravel pits beside Mono City, which is first rate second run/add-on ground. Suitable dirt biking territory makes for an engaging run--it's only the pace that's different. Tonight, I encouraged the sand to encourage an easy pace, and the nighthawks meep-ing and sweeping low in the faint light made good company, if not decipherable conversation.

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9 mi, 63 min, AM: Poole Power Plant Road, in Lee Vining Canyon

4 mi, 28 min, PM: the sagebrush ramble beside Mono City

Also: A blog post, In Defense of a Rock, for HCN.

Brief observations

from tonight's run, finished at dark:

The only time Cedar Hill, on the northwest shore, appears as the island it once was, in the ice age, is when the sun has at last fallen behind Conway Summit, and the rest of basin has waded carefully into shadow. Then, looking the miles to its lit slope, I imagine myself 700 feet underwater.

The ants on the road up to Black Point--a feature which was also underwater, and erupted there, super-heating the lake--have cleared each granule of black sand, each rounded shard of basalt, around their own small, waiting craters.

There's a certain distance, running away from Wilson Creek, where the water sounds as a car, and instinctually I turn, startled. Afraid. How far we, I, have come from our original confidence in and closeness to streams.

Nighthawks were born to spook runners, and each other, with their shouting feathers.


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12 mi, 84 min; Mono City to the Wilson Creek/Cemetery Road junction, and out and back, spidery offshoots from there toward Black Point and County Park