Or, maybe, just hanging out gabbing.
or practice rock vaulting
Whatever we are doing, we will be doing it in the Sierras for the next week.
As a liberal, I find this non-government solution astounding and sort of unbelievable but, as someone who loves cars and driving – I was born in California afterall – I think this is great.
From Matt Yglesias at
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/08/uncontrolled-intersections/
Two young women at Lake Tenaya
Driving back from my trip to the east side of the Sierras, driving by Lake Tenaya, I saw two women rock climbers walking towards their climb.
After I took their picture and started to drive away, they turned and I saw them from the back, looking at their guide, and asked for another picture.
When I saw them with their ropes and hardware, their helmets; I was struck with how young and vulnerable* they seemed, graceful and delicate; and macho. I was reminded of several things at once: my daughter's soccer team calling themselves macha, Lynn Hill, and the whole new story of young, kick-ass women.
*when I commented to them on that, they took exception, saying that they were not vulnerable – but, of course, the opposite of vulnerable is invulnerable, impenetrable, untouchable and they seemed to be none of that – so I am going to stick with vulnerable.
The joy of sun-dried towels
I remember when our family first got a cloths dryer. I was only a child. I don't actually remember getting the dryer, but I do remember how soft the dryer- dried towels were. My sister and I loved them.
But my mother continued to sun-dry all our laundry when ever she could. She said that she preferred the way they smelled; that they smelled fresher. We have a air-drying rack in the bathroom – the drier sits where the tub will one day go, so I guess it should be called a showerroom – and Michele uses it to dry a variety of delicates. As an expeariment, I dried my towel on it.
THE towel dried stiff, but – using it – that stiff towel brought back a flood of comforting childhood memories. Not specific memories but very strong, generalized, memories of being young. I am sort of shocked at how much memory came from just rubbing the towel on my body.
Highway 20 from Mono Lake to Tioga Pass
I love the eastern Sierras – the escarpment along the 395 Highway corridor – they are so dramatic. The eleven or twelve mile drive from Mono Lake to Tioga Pass is the most extreme contrast I have ever seen. It goes from here (both double clickable to enlarge)
to here
in twenty minutes.
At the bottom is Mono Lake which is really not a lake, but a small, very salty sea, a basin with no outlet. Even at that, Mono is a strange place. For years, I drove by it at top speed on my way to more scenic places. I think that most people drove by it and the City of Los Angeles had siphoned off all the creeks running into it; so the Lake was slowly drying up. In 1978 or so, one guy*, David Gaines, changed this little part of the world.
Shocked and appalled by what he saw, Gaines formed the Mono Lake Committee and started talking to everybody – the conservation
community, politicians, schools, service organizations, anybody he could corner – about the wonder of this forgotten lake/sea. Now there is a big Visitor Center overlooking the lake; the small town of Lee Vining – also overlooking the lake – is full of tourists, many of them from Europe; and Los Angeles is no longer sucking the lake dry.
From the bottom, looking up, the Sierras don’t look very impressive.
At the bottom of the road, Forestry Service fire engines are waiting for directions.
But, then, the road just starts up,
Past a pine level, and past rock outcroppings where the seeps run all summer long and the hanging flowers always seem to be blooming.
Running into and then along a glaciated valley to the East gate to Yosemite National Park – where, now, there is always a line – at the gate, that is.
It used to be there was no line – because all the receipts from the gate were turned over to Washington to put in the General Fund – now Yosemite gets to keep most of the receipts and the National Park service the rest. Now, the rangers religiously man the gates.