A northern beach of Mono Lake. The white on the shore is not wind-swept foam, but alkali deposits. The water has receded and the alkali dust is blowing in the wind. Beautiful colors in a rough landscape.
@hollyhoneychurch Trying to imagine what you are sensing about the air, I come up blank. If the alkali dust had reached us, not delicious. But a continual supply of fresh air from the Sierra behind us, absolutely clean. Temps were moderate, roughly 20C, but at 6500', the sun is intense. Not an easy place to ranch, which is the subject of the next set of photos.
@cliffordbeshers : ) i'm gradually learning that fresh air smells different depending on where i am. I remember being in Madeira above the clouds and the air was so sweet, in Glasgow early morn it's an earthy fresh with a hint of smoke. Your photo is so striking I wondered what your air smelt like : )
@hollyhoneychurch After watching Neil Gaiman's Dr Who 'petrichor' episode, I kept thinking of the smell of dirt after rain in the eastern US, where I grew up. Then I was in a park in Sydney when it rained, and oh my, the smell of the dust there is so intense. Here, it is more DG (deteriorated granite), which is pebbly more than dusty. The sage and the rabbit brush dominate.
@cliffordbeshers : ) do you think earth and dirt smell the same? I say that things smell 'earthy'...but it might not be the same as dirt/dust : ) would you have the smell of pines where you are now? I'm looking forward to going further north in Scotland to get some real Highland air.
@hollyhoneychurch Everything smells different everywhere, everywhen, if you pay attention. Every summer when I get tomatoes grown by neighbors I am transported away from the supermarket and back to the garden of the house I grew up in.
I live in the high desert now, where the elevation goes from 4k to 10k feet, from vertical cliffs to canyons to alluvial plains to volcanic craters. Every nook and cranny looks, smells, and feels different. The Jeffrey Pines only grow in the canyon near the creek or much higher up. The pinyon pines only start at 6000' and stop at 8000'. I live on tuff but the nearby alluvials are all granite. And the smells are all muted until it rains, which it rarely does....
@cliffordbeshers wow, you’ve got strong land going on there 😀 must feel powerful. I’ve been reading The Silmarrilion and I can imagine the Gods from Tolkien’s story creating mountains and expanse like you describe. Not to mention all the scents 😄 and even the tomatoes. Now they’ve got a pungent smell (especially on the fingers after being picked).
@cliffordbeshers that it rarely rains where you are is funny... here in Glasgow it’s rarely dry hee.
@hollyhoneychurch When I moved here, I drove from Illinois with my niece: corn to wheat to mountains and desert. She played 'What part of Middle Earth is this?' the whole way. Western Iowa rolling hills greening in June: The Shire. In a remote, huge, empty valley in Nevada, we saw wild horses: Rohan. Later, her brother visited and we went to a volcanic crater just 650 years old. That's right, less than 1000. Mordor, of course. And if you look back a few weeks, you will find a picture of a switchback road up a mountain revealed by snow: the road to the back door of the Lonely Mountain.
@cliffordbeshers that's some countryside you've got going on there : ) beautiful moments, gorgeous scenery. What does your cat make of it all? : )
@cliffordbeshers dry heat is awesome - only time I get it is in a sauna : ) would be lovely to get some rain after a dry spell and go dancing in it.
@hollyhoneychurch Nothing. Not my cat, he just visits, and he never gets outside. Foxes, coyotes, and mountain lions roaming freely means the house cats stay inside.
@cliffordbeshers I like the idea of an adventure cat. Lead train them to keep them safe, then away you go into the great outdoors.
@hollyhoneychurch I believe those kind of cats are called 'dogs'. One of the two cats who visits does like to get outside. He goes just past the front steps so he can roll in the dust. Then he goes back in.
@cliffordbeshers That's great! A chilled cat. I've done some catsitting in my time and it's always a bit tricky if they're indoor cats trying to escape out the front door to freedom. I'd like a cat like this one one day. Such a sweet story : )
