Flying over the Sierra Nevada Range

The dark thoughts of the Feather River, hampered by a dam, turn white rimed at the edges. We climb the Sierras, fresh snow that teaches the rocks to be beautiful. Tahoe, the crown jewel, is flowing over its banks. It peeks out from under a cloud bank like a mirage, the beauty of the Sierras is hidden from the eye of God. Paralleling Interstate 80, the old pony express trail can be seen from 30,000 feet.

All those Nevada sinkholes filled with water for the first time in memory. A Seals and Croft song, Even the desert will bloom, comes to mind. Ancient shorelines from a crazy paisley pattern. What lake beds that have become as desolate as the Aral Sea, are reminded of the continuity of their ancient shores, yet this is but a drop in the bucket, for there was once a much larger bodies of water even than this watershed becoming visible in the desert.

The creek is most economical in the mountains, it heads south, interrupted by a small zigzag, but when it hits the plains, it oxbows back and forth on itself, so severely, Siamese-twinned islands appear. But the creek goes nowhere, it dries up in the desert, and sinks down into the water table to become part of of the underground stream. No water in this desert will ever reach the ocean in my lifetime. Evaporation will only take it further east to the Great Salt Lake.