(Digest or disregard as it pleases you)
9.18.2010
Hi there!
Today we are driving from the Owen’s Valley in California, where we spent the past week, to Escalante, Utah. This morning we left the lap of Mt. Whitney, the tallest peak in the lower-48 at 14,494 ft above sea level, and at 9:30 am we were playing in the sand dunes in Death Valley, the lowest point in the US somewhere around -282 ft. We were running below the sea! As we drive on through the hills of billions of shades of brown, I like to imagine the valley filled with water. Big blue whales float towards the Sierra Mountains, coyote-sized crabs scuttle around sagebrush.
The changes in altitude have been squishing my head in funny ways, and I marvel at the physical affects of altitude. Paul Hoornbeck, a visitor who guided our writing unit this past week, encouraged us to embrace hypoxia and dehydration as inspiration for our “epiphanies,” the end-products of this week’s writing. I think, in some cases, it’s been working. Near the beginning of the week, we drove up to 10,000 ft to visit the Bristlecone pines, the oldest trees, yet another superlative in this dynamic landscape. A bristlecone will grow for thousands of years, letting segments of its body die away in order to survive. Their wood twists in intimate, animated curves.
Most of our writing was done just outside of Lone Pine, CA in the Owens Valley. The Owens Valley is a tangled region with a historical identity crisis. The mountains on the East of the valley were once peppered with silver mines. The hills were so rich and the mines so penetrating that the tents of the mining camps were fashioned with silver grommits. However, the Eastern side was too arid to supply lumber, so the mining camps logged the Sierra Mountains on the valley’s West. They diverted creeks into a flume to transport lumber into the valley floor before powering them up the other side of the valley. Those living in the camps introduced bass, blue-gill, and bullfrogs into the remaining creeks for their food supply and recreation, which quickly ate or out-competed the native pupfish and chew-chub.
The Owen’s Lake is a terminal lake that once covered 110 square miles in a naturally alkali water. Historically, the lake has been a briny hub for hundreds of migratory bird species. “Phalaropes” are a funky fuzzy little bird. The female is the colorful, flamboyant sex of the species, and she courts the drab male, who incubates the eggs while the female continues traveling. The phalaropes arrive here from the Andean salt lakes in Bolivia, weighing one ounce, and feast on the brine shrimp that thrive in Owens and Mono Lake) and double their bodyweight before continuing another 3,000 miles to Canada to nest. The Baird’s Sandpiper’s path stretches even farther, from the Arctic Circle in Northern Alaska to Patagonia in Tierra del Fuego. The world’s smallest sandpipers, Lee’s Sandpipers, pause here after their nesting season in the Copper River Delta, AK. When we visited the lake’s diminished shoreline, a few of the juveniles hopped near our feet. Today, each bird that feeds here is an environmental victory in flight. In the 1920’s, all the ponds and tributaries that contributed to Owens and Mono Lakes were diverted into the Los Angeles aqueduct, which flows from Mono Lake to LA. The aqueduct sucked Owens bone-dry, and silty sediment at the floor the once-lake was let loose to the air. From 2001-2004, 78% of the dust events of the US occurred in this valley. Owens earned a new superlative as the largest source of air pollution in the US. The air quality eventually caught the attention of the EPA, and under the Clean Air Act, Los Angeles was required to restore the lake. They’ve been piping in water from the aqueduct and mixing it with a salty solution pulled from deep under the lake floor to rehydrate the valley. Currently, 18 square miles of the lake is actually wet and viable habitat for brine shrimp and feathered visitors. Progress here is arduous and slow, and socially inflammatory. Mike Prather, the conservationist we spoke with, is a calm, friendly man who taught biology in Lone Pine for decade. But because of his position as a conservationist, his desire to recover habitat, people will walk to the other side of the street to avoid him on the side-walk, “give him the stink-eye,” as he put it.
Beyond the current environmental identity of Owens Valley, it’s also the home of Manzanar. Manzanar was once a fruit orchard, an apple oasis in the middle of the desert, but it fell in disrepair from poor water management. During WWII, it became a war relocation center to imprison Japanese and Japanese-Americans living near the West coast. 120,000 people were stripped from their homes and funneled into the artificial town of Manzanar. We toured what was left of the camp, and Dana and I found some of the remaining fruit trees behind the school house. We tried to pick the pears – they were coarse, bitter, unripe. They left a film in our mouths.
In other news, I am learning to fall in love with this place. We have been surrounded by beautiful, bulging granite boulders that beg to be climbed on. I drink in the sunrises and sunsets, thirsty for color in the desert palette. Never have I ever been so spoiled with such beautiful views as I pee.
This upcoming week is our next unit in ecology, studying aspen with Mary O’Brien. I can hardly wait to play in Utah red rocks. Looks like we’ll have a full moon while we’re here, too!
I’ll stop rambling now and let you on your way,
Much love! Have fun!
Madelyn
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