Tag Archives: sierra
Harvest and Renewal
Sam was anxious about September, and the Dorahs confirmed his fears by telling him they’d have to send him to school. He didn’t pout or complain. He attended school as directed. He got on the bus every weekday morning and kept to his best behavior. As summer ages, the mood of the Sink relaxes into [...]
Sam and the Dragon
It surpasses all wonders that a day goes by wherein the whole world is not consumed in flame. Pliny, Natural History The dry breath of the Mojave blew tumbleweeds, ravens, voices, and parcels of waste across the plain. A yellow mongrel inspected scents from shrub to shrub, aimless as the dust devils that whirled [...]
Epilogue
Twenty years have passed since I left this place. Yes, I do visit on occasion. I might be drawn back by a memory of a sleepless night on a starry ridge. I might wish to sleep with the Giants once more. I might miss the golden glow of trout napping in the watery sun or [...]
California v. II
… continued Metamorphosis About thirty million years ago, the trailing edge of the Farallon Plate began to disappear under North America in the shape of an inverted 90° wedge, beginning at the location of present-day Los Angeles, and proceeding northeast under the continent, leaving nothing but hot mantle where before was the cold, subducting oceanic [...]
California v. I
It’s common knowledge that water is the bane of fire, but the Earth tells us a different tale. Up to about 200 million years ago, at the dawn of the Jurassic Period, there was no California. It might be said that even North America didn’t exist. North America had then part of the supercontinent of [...]
Kissing the Killer
Throughout the lowlands singers sing of your deep, feminine soul; How reclining, you roll down your bed amidst your veils and embankments; They marvel at your fluent, accommodating ways, how you slip through the world, flowing around every obstacle, rounding every edge, and polishing every turn. You compel us, it is true, down to where [...]
Kern Canyon 2008: Friday
This last full moon, I backpacked up to the Kern Canyon stock bridge in Sequoia National Park. I started at Lewis Camp Trailhead, in Sequoia National Monument, just outside the southern boundary of the Golden Trout Wilderness. This trailhead sits near the top of the Western Divide, on the historic Jordan Trail. For many trips [...]
Sisters of the Sierra
One special characteristic of the Sierra Nevada is that it’s a rare example of a high mountain range in a Mediterranean climate, which means that it is dry and sunny half the year and moist and mild during the other half of the year. This combination makes for a very combustible cycle of fuel production [...]
What is California?
An enumeration of the elements of California might proceed as follows: The San Andreas Fault The California Current The Sierra Nevada The Central Valley Redwood Forests The San Andreas Fault The Pacific and North American Plates, two of the world’s largest, collide from the Gulf of California to Shelter Cove, just south of Cape Mendocino, [...]
California As Collision
Along the northeastern shore of the Great Ocean, a long, thin strip of land stretches 1500 miles, in about as straight a line as Nature will allow Herself to draw. The strip is born of the grinding of the great oceanic plate against the continental plate. From Cabo San Lucas to Cape Mendocino, California is [...]