Journal entry, back side of the Sierras

I am sitting on the backside of of the Sierras, looking into the Owens Valley. Mount Williamson rises up 14,375 feet. The great eastern wall divides California from the Great Basin region. A collision of ecosystems. The bare bones of the White Mountains harbor a different story, and the Inyo fossils dream of ancient seas. this is the land of cloud of consciousness and lava flows where the wind wakes the morning on a thousand miles of sage. The Owens Valley water wars, Chinatown, the Tinemaha reservoir, the beginning of the journey of water to the LA aqueduct. I find myself naming things. As if that could stop time in its tracks. Onion Valley, Kearsarge Pass at 9200 feet, the saddle, the old road ,sedimentary versus volcanic. Kings Canyon, Mt  Gould, and the Bristlecone Pines, Methuselah clocks in at 4700 years, Schulman Grove and the Alabama Hills faulted up from the Sierras in 1872, an 8.1 earthquake, the valley floor dropped 20 feet mount Whitney risers 14,496 feet up touching the sky. A mountain still growing.

9/23/2000