The Land Community

"The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land... This sounds simple: do we not already sing our love for and obligation to the land of the free and the home of the brave? Yes, but just what and whom do we love? Certainly not the soil, which we are sending helter-skelter down river. Certainly not the waters, which we assume have no function except to turn turbines, float barges, and carry off sewage. Certainly not the plants, of which we exterminate whole communities without batting an eye. Certainly not the animals, of which we have already extirpated many of the largest and most beautiful species. A land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these ‘resources,’ but it does affirm their right to continued existence, and, at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural state. In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such." 

Aldo Leopold, The Land Ethic

Lakes

Some of my favorite things to see in the Sierra region are the lakes. Two in particular blew my socks off, as did Muir’s. The first that both he and I saw heading Eastward, him on July 26, 1869, and I on September 4, 2011, was Lake Tenaya:

“The largest of the many glacier lakes in sight, and the one with the finest shore scenery, is Tenaya, about a mile long, with an imposing mountain dipping its feet into it on the south side, Cathedral Peak a few miles above its head, many smooth swelling rock-waves and domes on the north, and in the distance southward a multitude of snowy peaks, the fountain-heads of rivers…”

And on July 27: “Up and away to Lake Tenaya—another big day, enough for a lifetime. The rocks, the air, everything speaking with audible voice or silent; joyful, wonderful, enchanting, banishing weariness and sense of time…

The lake was named for one of the chiefs of the Yosemite tribe. Old Tenaya is said to have been a good Indian to his tribe. When a company of soldiers followed his band into Yosemite to punish them for cattle-stealing and other crimes, they fled to this lake by a trail that leads out of the upper end of the valley, early in the spring, while the snow was still deep; but being pursued, they lost heart and surrendered. A fine monument the old man has in this bright lake, and likely to last a long time, though lakes die as well as Indians, being gradually filled with detritus carried in by the feeding streams, and to some extent also by snow avalanches and rain and wind. A considerable portion of the Tenaya basin is already changed into a forested flat and meadow at the upper end, where the main tributary enters from Cathedral Peak. Two other tributaries come from the Hoffman Range. The outlet flows westward through Tenaya Cañon to join the Merced River in Yosemite. Scare a handful of loose soil is to be seen on the north shore. All is bare, shining granite, suggesting the Indian name of the lake, Pywiack, meaning shining rock. The basin seems to have been slowly excavated by the sands of years. On the south side an imposing mountain rises from the water’s edge to a height of three thousand feet or more, feathered with hemlock and pine, and huge shining domes on the east, over the tops of which the grinding, wasting, molding glacier must have swept as the wind does today.”

August 8: “The view of the lake from the top is, I think, the best of all. Made sketch of the lake, and sauntered back to camp, my iron-shod shoes clanking on the pavements disturbing the chipmunks and birds. After dark went out to the shore—not a breath of air astir; the lake a perfect mirror reflecting the sky and mountains with their stars and trees and wonderful sculpture, all their grandeur refind and doubled--- a marvelously impressive picture, that seemed to belong more to heaven than earth.”

Another lake Muir enjoyed was Mono Lake, at the end of his travels in the summer of ’69. There he witnessed a native community:

August 21: “Down on the shore of Mono Lake I saw a number of their flimsy huts [insert: I went to Mono Lake and learned that what Muir saw were the temporary summer huts, while the year-round wooden cabins built farther from the lake were much more sturdy] on the banks of streams that dash swiftly into that dead sea, --- mere brush tents where they lie and eat at their ease. Some of the men were feasting on buffalo berries, lying beneath the tall bushes now red with fruit. The berries are rather insipid, but they must be wholesome, since for days and weeks the Indians, it is said, eat nothing else. In the season they in like manner depend chiefly on the fat larvae of a fly that breeds in the salt water of the alke, or on the bit fat corrugated caterpillars of a species of silkworm that feeds on the leaves of the yellow pine. Occasionally a grand rabbit-drive is organized and hundreds are slain with clubs on the alke shore, chased and frightened into a dense crowd by dogs, boys, girls, men and women, and rings of sage brush fire when of course they are quickly killed. The skins are made into blankets. In the autumn the more enterprising of the hunters bring in a good many deer, and rarely a wild sheep from the high peaks. Antelopes used to be abundant on the desert at the base of the interior mountain ranges. Sage hens, grouse, and squirrels help to vary their wild diet of worms, pine nuts, and good bread and good mush are all made from acorns and wild rye. Strange to say, they seem to like the lake larvae best of all."

See all that black lining the shores? Those are the flies whose larvae the Paiute people ate, and which the seagulls currently eat.

"The desert around the lake is surprisingly flowery...."

"Opposite the mouth of the cañon a range of volcanic cones extends southward from the lake, rising abruptly out of the desert like a chain of mountains. The largest of the cones are well-formed crater, and all of them are evidently comparatively recent additions ot the landscape. At a distance of a few miles they look like heaps of loose ashes that have never been blest by either rain or snow, but for a’ that and a’ that, yellow pines are climbing their gray slopes, trying to clothe them and give beauty for ashes. A country of wonderful contrasts. Hot deserts bounded by snow-laden mountains--- cinders and ashes scattered on glacier-polished pavements--- frost and fire working together in the making of beauty. In the lake are several volcanic islands, which show that the waters were once mingled with fire.”

The volcanic mountains South of and just beyond the lake:

The volcanic islands:

I don’t think Mr. Muir ever fancied living in the arid turf east of the Sierra, though he clearly appreciated, enjoyed, and learned from it. I prefer the green as well, but there is something about Mono Lake that makes it a peculiar medium between dry and forested. Here, in the desert, is a gigantic body of water, teeming with life, with verdant creek basins where the snow runs off into the lake, and with the loden, pine-laden, ivory-topped Sierra Nevada as a backdrop.

Mono Lake is also exceptional in that it is the second oldest lake in the country, it’s 2.5 times saltier than the ocean (which forms tufa, the incredible calcium deposit structures you see emerging from the lake), and it’s a high traffic area for various breeding and resting birds. And as Muir said, the flowering brush is plentiful and brilliant. Fortunately, after the damage the city of Los Angeles did to its water supply, it is being restored and shows no signs of being anything short of wild, beautiful, and unusual.

Blessed Unrest

"When Canada tried to force the Inuit into encampments on Baffin Island in the 1950s, one Inuit grandfather would have nothing to do with it. 'The family took away all of his weapons and all of his tools, hoping that would force him into the settlement. Did it? No. In the middle of an Arctice night with a blizzard blowing, the old man slipped out of the igloo into the darkness and simply pulled down his caribou hide and sealskin trousers and defecated into his hand. As the feces began to freeze he shaped it into the form of a blade. As the shit took shape he put a spray of saliva along one leading edge to create a sharp edge. When the implement was finally created from the cold, he used it to kill a dog. He skinned the dog and used the skin of the dog to improvise a harness and used the rib cage of the dead dog to improvise the sled, harnessed an adjacent dog, and then with shit-knife in belt disappeared over the ice flow.' The elder returned alive and well in the spring. Forty years later, the Canadian government relented and returned the Inuit lands, creating Nunavut, a territory the size of western Europe."

Paul Hawkens, Blessed Unrest, with inner quote by Wade Davis, The Ethnosphere and the Academy

John Muir

After a one-month hiatus from pledging this and that, I have a plan for this blog the following month: to explore the Sierra by learning about the flora and fauna, document what I see with photos, continue my very first pledge to read John Muir’s My First Summer in the Sierra, and share what I discover on this blog. I visited many of the places John Muir marveled at in his book and will provide photos, information, and his writings about them. Today is dedicated to all the meadows out there, particularly Tuolumne, the most beautiful meadow I’ve ever encountered.

 Taken September 4, 2011. You can see that it's located towards the Eastern side of the Sierras, at about 8600 feet.

And here are John Muir’s musings from August 9, 1869:

 “The big Tuolumne Meadows are flowery lawns, lying along the south fork of the Tuolumne River at a height of about eighty-five hundred to nine thousand feet above the sea, partially separated by forests and bars of glaciated granite. Here the mountains seem to have been cleared away or set back, so that wide-open views may be had in every direction… This is the most spacious and delightful high pleasure-ground I have yet seen. The air is keen and bracing, yet warm during the day, and though lying high in the sky, the surrounding mountains are so much higher, one feels protected as if in a grand hall. Mts. Dana and Gibbs, massive red mountains, perhaps thirteen thousand feet high or more, bound the view on the east, the Cathedral and Unicorn Peak, with many nameless peaks, on the south, and Hoffman Range on the west, and a number of peaks unnamed, as far as I know, on the north. One of these last is much like the Cathedral.”

See the picture above to spot the reddish mountains of Dana and Gibbs. 

“The grass of the meadows is mostly fine and silky, with exceedingly slender leaves, make a close sod, above which the panicles of minute purple flowers seem to float in airy, misty lightness, while the sod is enriched with at least three species of gentian and as many or more of orthocarpus, potentilla, ivesia, solidago, pentstemon, wither their gay colors—purple, blue, yellow, and red--- all of which I may know better ere long. A central camp will probably be made in this region.”

I spotted a couple of prairie dogs scampering through these grasses. They took a moment of their busy afternoon to stare back at me. Can you make them out? Of course they blend in very well…

As I was there a month later, I didn’t catch any of the wildflowers, but here are some photos of each that Muir mentions that I found on the internet:

 Orthocarpus, aka Owl's Clover:

Potentilla:

Ivesia:

Solidago:

Pentstemon:

Muir wrote of meadows in general: “I found three kinds of meadows: (1) Those contained in basins not yet filled with earth enough to make a dry surface. They are planted with several species of carex, and have their margins diversified with robust flowering plants such as veratrum, larkspur, lupine, etc. (2) Those contained in the same sort of basins, once lakes like the first, but so situated in relation to the streams that flow through them and beds of transportable sand, gravel, etc. that they are now high and dry and well drained. This dry condition and corresponding difference in their vegetation may be caused by no superiority of position, or power of transporting filling material in the streams that belong to them, but simply by the basin being shallow and therefore sooner filled. They are planted with grasses, mostly fine, silky, and rather short-leaved, Calamagrostis and Agrostis being the principal genera. They form delightfully smooth, level sods in which one finds two or three species of gentian and as many purple and yellow orthocarpus, violet, vaccinium, kalmia, bryanthus, and lonicera. (3) Meadows hanging on ridge and mountain slopes, not in basins at all, but made and held in place by masses of boulders and fallen trees, which, forming dams one above another in close succession on small, outspread, channelless streams, have collected soil enough for the growth of grasses, carices, and many flowering plants, and being kept well watered, without being subject to currents sufficiently strong to carry them away, a hanging or sloping meadow is the result. Their surfaces are seldom so smooth as the others, being roughened more or less by the projecting tops of the dam rocks or logs; but at a little distance this roughness is not noticed, and the effect is very striking, bright green, fluent, down-sweeping flowery ribbons on gray slopes… How wonderful must be the temper of the elastic leaves of grasses and sedges to make curves so perfect and fine. Tempered a little harder, they would stand erect, stiff and bristly, like strips of metal; a little softer, and every leaf would lie flat. And what fine painting and tinting there is on the glumes and pales, stamens and feathery pistils. Butterflies colored like the flowers waver above them in wonderful profusion, and many other beautiful winged people, numbered and known and loved only by the Lord, are waltzing together high over head, seemingly in pure play and hilarious enjoyment of their little sparks of life. How wonderful they are! How do they get a living, and endure the weather? How are their little bodies, with muscles, nerves, organs, kept warm and jolly in such admirable exuberant health? Regarded only as mechanical inventions, how wonderful they are! Compared with these, Godlike man’s greatest machines are as nothing.”

I agree!

It is pretty apparent that Tuolumne Meadows is classified as a (2) meadow: in a basin, dry with a well-defined and well-formed river/creek running through it (Tuolumne River to be exact), and covered in grasses. But leaving behind names and classifications, it’s simply one of the prettiest phenomena on the planet. Enjoy the photos and I hope you can get yourself there someday, too.