Solidarity in rain

Thunderclouds, lightning, downpours today, and forecasted for the next few. Some runners--at least me--become down right doggish when weather comes. Most of the afternoon, I felt nervous, pent-up. When the booms shook the house, a part of me wanted to scamper downstairs to the bathtub and cower. Or, to switch metaphorical tacks, when the day's mood is off, I find myself walking to the window and looking out, my hand on my chin, like someone in a harborside house who compulsively looks out for the return of the beloved under distant masts. A person introspective, in all appearances, but more actually numb. I dramatize (though, we do have a view of the lake). But when the winds are suspect, I become anxious searching for the right window to venture out, and it's then, more than any other time, that I sometimes miss company on my runs. Solidarity in rain.

Of course, once I'm outside, it's often not so bad. Quite nice, in fact. And in the Eastern Sierra, if you drive a canyon or two over, sometimes you can discover that window. Rather unfortunate that it doesn't work that way everywhere.

Tonight, after a short store shift, I drove just south of Lee Vining and parked at the base of the road to Horse Meadows. From there, I ran on a jeep trail to Oil Plant Road, which merges with Aqueduct Road (which rolls over Walker and Parker Creeks). I crossed the north side of the June Lake Loop, went over the wooden bridge that spans the Grant Lake Reservoir spillway, and then turned around at 49 minutes. My legs felt heavy for the first quarter of the run, then I warmed up (I even left my shirt behind, three miles in, and was a bit chilled by the end). The vistas from Aqueduct Road, especially of the Mono Craters and Reverse Peak above June Lake are altissimo; horns should accompany! (Or at least photos, soon!) The lake, meanwhile, was shrouded in mist and rain, but the sky ever so politely spit just a little in the South Basin.

Also: near the turn around, I spent a few minutes watching an osprey hover and swoop over Rush Creek. Tourists are often miffed as to why an osprey, an exclusively fish-eating raptor, would nest over Mono Lake. How does it survive? I pose the question ... No, not on shrimp... Well, there above was the answer silhouetted below cloud and light rain. The bird had flown down from Grant Lake Reservoir to test Rush Creek for trout, but quickly went back. We passed each other twice, silently.

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14 mi, 98 min; O+B on Oil Plant Road and Aqueduct Road from the base of the Horse Meadows Road

Week Total: 76 mi

In no rush at Rush Creek

Considering the jolt I put my legs through yesterday, they were in decent shape today. Went for a leisurely, ten mile shakeout on Test Station Road around 6pm, then walked about a mile down to the Rush Creek Delta. I've never been disappointed there. Downy, golf ball-size spotted sandpiper chicks were peeping in the salt grass, bobbing their featherless rumps just like the adults. I oh-so-cruelly cornered one, and it calmly hid under a small log where I took its photo.


I also saw a gadwall with sixteen ducklings on a reedy back pond and, later, accidentally surprised the mother. She started doing a broken-wing song and dance routine, awkwardly sculling through the water in a plashy fit to distract me, the menace, from her brood.

Finished my stroll just at dusk--to the elation of the birds, I'm sure. But I then managed to spook three poor poorwills off the road on the way back to town. Almost a complete moon over the Basin. Driving home after ice cream (dinner) at the Mono Market, the mountains and craters were faint-gray aglow. Tomorrow, I'm planning on several late, easy miles beneath the full effect.


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10 mi, 70 min; Test Station Road (a kind of modified Tufa-to-Tufa)

Fine desert sand

Squeezed in 12 miles before the World Cup final along the Test Station Road. Running around midday, when the light is sandy (and often as rough as pumice), tends to be unremarkable, mind-numbing. But Rush Creek was pushing 500 CFS, or so, under the road on its way to the delta--a lot of water, a roaring, if not raucous outpouring through the culvert. After I finished, I desperately wanted to drive back and jump in to the wave train (which I hear people have surfed of late). But there was no time; I regret to say (truly) that futbol won out, today.


Adding on the final two miles down Picnic Ground Road, I passed a poorwill nestled into the sand that some tire didn't avoid. How they sit on the road and glare at oncoming death with a bright, reflective eye. Running, I encounter as many passed animals as live, and examining them I've learned something, briefly, about anatomy, or at least its fragility. This poorwill, a night bird, an insect feaster, reminded me of the Western screech owl that I carried like a football tucked in my arms back to my house in high school, only to keep it frozen for one and a half years (beside a DO NOT THROW AWAY index card that my sister finally had the good sense to ignore).


I'd like to think I'm growing out of my interest in roadkill, which is void of what matters. At the very least, now, when I stop to examine roadkill, I make sure to carry it off to the shoulder of the road. But I did pluck a few primaries to hold up to the light: an alteration of brown and black like the shadows in the imprint of a tire on fine desert sand.


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12 mi, 84 min; Test Station/Picnic Ground Road (aka, Tufa-to-Tufa)

Week Total: 70 mi