Unglaciated Surfaces

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On the crest of the Sierra, mountains slowly dissipate,
gray to green to brown to smog to my west
and like a cliff they drop off into the Great Basin to the east. Clouds drift across the surface of Mono Lake.
Sky Pilots bloom in the old growth forest of five inch tall perennials.

Flatter surfaces in the alpine, face thrashing winds
and hold no snow. Ice does not form and as the glaciers of the last two ice ages choked out and carved most of the high sierra
it left these areas unscratched as they stood above the ice,
like islands. Only here, soil remained, where isolated plant communities evolved, leaving unique species now endemic only to these few surfaces.

And now, just as the species, with nowhere higher to go as everything gets warmer, begin to disappear,
I gasp for air and bumble around with brilliant botanists and do my best at stuffing my brain and keeping it together, helping to put together an evaporating puzzle.

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Comments

[Patrick]

Vivid Brilliance we rarely see
The photos are spectacular Stevie Deevie D. Now we need Haliburton to install some factories and create some sub-par jobs for poverty level wages. (Would love to see some drilling activity there too). Sarcasm aside, enjoy where you are and what you are a part of, so many of us will never experience a millionth of the real beauty that you live every day. Even though it is in surrounds us we are blind and ignorant (at times blissfully) to its existence. Peace NaDelfaveroo