TRAVEL: Another Eastern Sierra Sojourn

 Our favorite place - how does one designate this?  It is a macro-micro semblance of the whole one seeks; fresh and familiar at once.

Seasons change here, and  the earth's energies are  always visible. Vast skies fill and empty with clouds, wind, sun, moon, stars.  Lakes tremble beneath the wind's passage, and reflect bounteous light.

Streams spill with fresh snow melt, leaving the mountainsides sparse spotted in late summer with snow patches. Collisions and uplift that created the rubble beneath the slopes are revealed now, great gray and red slab sides clutching at the tumbled rocks like a woman lifting a ruffled dress. 

This year we stayed at Tamarack Lodge, as we love to do, delighting in its quite genuine (1927) log cabin vernacular style.  A lake is steps out the door, as is a winter cross-country ski center. We still love the restaurant, too, perhaps the only place in the Sierras, famous for its trout, that serves it.

The lake was peaceful to kayak, dark winebottle green and glowing.  

After all these years of going to the Sierras, I saw my first bear on foot, at the Twin Lakes Inlet, about 30 feet away.  All those dire warnings in Alaska and not a bear did we see.

Rock Creek Lakes Hike (Little Lakes Basin, Mosquito Flat Trailhead) 

I made it to Heart Lake, the fourth lake.
It was a tough hike for me - it's all at 10,000+ feet.

Water levels were good except in the second lake, Mack, which looked quite choked with grasses at each narrowed end.  We had a lot of fun fishing in Rock Creek Lake, too, which had been stocked and gave us the only fishing plenty we enjoyed on this trip.

Summer is a slower bite.

mountain pride penstemon 

Stair lakes - blue gems strung together with rocky waterfalls: as you ascend, they descend: nature composes its own chord patterns.  And their key signature is wildflowers.

  

 How I loved this discovery: they are Alpine columbine, and if I hadn't decided to explore around the farthest lakebed I reached that day instead of using the trail, I would never have found them.  Red columbine, yes, and now these, pushing into my face on a rock escarpment that I climbed up to return to trail.

I call these the queen of the mountains:  it is a mariposa lily, and is a singularly pure and imposing bloom giving me special joy whenever I find it. 

Best guess on these among the many fritillaries depicted in my Sierra Field Guide is that these two are Yuba fritillaries.  

John loved fishing Rock Creek Lake  this year, and on the shore in the group camp area I found a lovely path to follow and found a new bird.

This is a red-breasted sapsucker, with a limited range on the Pacific Coast.  I heard the 5 rapid taps described by the Cornell Ornithology website, and watched it flying high in the aspen-pine forest canopy.

I love this book - I carry it with me on most hikes, though it's more comprehensive than I need. Field identifications are very easy with it. The drawings are beautiful.  I can't imagine how the author/artist found so many specimens to draw.


Virginia Lakes Hike

I went back to try this hike after fishing Red and Blue Lakes for eastern brook trout, a fish native and labeled "wild" - most of the fish in the ES are hatchery-grown stocked rainbows.

They are about 6 - 8" long and very colorful, and they fight quite hard.  It's easy to release them, too, and they swim away with great speed, which is gratifying.

The lakes are rather close together, and so the hike, while tough for me, was exciting. Streams and waterfalls are close and connect the lakes as you cross them.

The trail cuts across the rubble façade on Blue Lake leading higher to Cooley Lake.
On the way, an old miner's shack, leaning precariously as do these mountains, seeking that angle of repose.

No California vintage wine for dinners here.  

 

This hike has such contrasts between mixed coniferous forest, bald violent slides of rubble,  meandering waterfalls and streams, and then the round-the-bend discovery of the next lake in the diadem. 

 

 At Frog Lakes, the far point of my hike that day, I could see the summit in the distance, and found this flower, baby elephant ears growing stream-side - a new flower for me.

At Frog Lakes, a peaceful pond to rest beside before going back down to a shower and dinner at my favorite ES restaurant, The Historic Mono Inn.  It's an early 1900's coach house overlooking the eerie and vast waterplain that is saline Mono Lake.  

No where is the light like this - the sunset and twilight last and last, and James Turrell, like the lilies of the field, has no array like one of these.

When I return home, I have an appointment to experience his Perceptual Cell at LACMA, a kind of MRI with color. One reclines and is motored into a viewing chamber to experience one's perceptions in a very controlled and pure way,  no sunset intruded upon by arcing bats, an evening insect hatch, or the onset of mountain night chill.

We sat on a patio in the warm evening, drinking a light red recommended by the gracious host, and lingering until I had to be drawn away to begin the next day of joy.

The Northern California Coast at Point Arena

We drove across the Yosemite high country, and stopped in Berkeley one night to celebrate a 65th birthday with our good friend Trish.  Then on the a house party with Trish, Judith, John's cousin, and Katharine, his sister.  

The contrast between the two regions is more  remarkable than country-hopping in Europe.  Sun and warmth and endless cumuli chasing across the hard blue sky, then bare gray fog sky over all, the sun bounty lost for days in certain lengths of shoreline.

Strange monstrous sea plants and huge barricades of driftwood suitable for use in a play about French Revolution are strewn along the wide gray strand. One passes between deep wide dune hillocks tufted with tousled sea grass, and emerges on a land's end of dystopian beauty.

Point Arena's small fishing cove with an East-coast style chowder house pier restaurant, was    pleasant, and here we found some sunshine and internet access. It had been very spotty all during our trip,

the first time it had ever bothered me - with no smart phone, by choice, I marveled at my appetite for instant connection and information that I lived without for so many years, making due with a card catalog at at the local library.

We had a few memorable games of Scrabble with our family, Trish winning most of the time because she is very very good at it, but also uses all the trick Scrabble words that John and I don't know because we never did that in the 50's and 60's when we learned to play. 

I remember laughing so those two evenings, as I hadn't in several weeks, as she placed words like "xi", "suq", "ai" - all of which she assured me were in the Scrabble Dictionary, boggling my mind at penetration of the global vernacular and slang into language.

When we got home, I thought that I would be satisfied, if choice or need be, if I never went anywhere but the Sierras.