Mono Basin Journal
A roundup of less-political events at Mono Lake
by Geoffrey McQuilkin
The sure signs of winter flew like banners over Mono Lake in October; twisting and spiraling, stringy lenticular clouds danced in the strong winds undulating across the Sierra. What followed was perhaps not unusual, but relatively unexpected. Several days before Halloween, twenty inches of snow fell in Lee Vining, burying unstacked firewood and lingering garden hoses, leaving the basin white from Conway Summit and Black Point to South Tufa and the Mono Craters.
Surrounded by bright snow, the lake took on a burnished silver hue as storm clouds continued to pass overhead. Out on the water, Eared Grebes suddenly were unavoidably visible: hundreds of thousands of low-riding birds, dabbling and diving in search of brine shrimp. Until then, I had never seen the spectacle David Gaines described so visually: birds so plentiful one can envision "walking across the lake stepping from the back of one bird to the back of the next."
A few days later, cold temperatures seized the basin. Traces of poconip-the ice fog that fills the basin in January-lurked about Paoha, lingering leaves went straight from green to brown, and the grebes, perhaps dreaming of warmer Mexican waters, navigated among drifting rafts of rippled ice, dark birds navigating a bright world in the light of the red, rising sun.
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