I’ve always associated the distance driven and the elevation climbed as proof positive I’ve left civilization in my wake.
Once the skyline changes from cement and glass rectangles to jaggy pines, I start getting those destructive thoughts; how I can drink the water, or bathe in it – as filters and iodine are no longer needed, Guardia and cow flop are in my wake – along with everything else the good doctor warned you about.
.. sure I know better, but it still takes the wind out of your sails when you see a blurb on a lake at the very crest of the Sierra’s, whose west side drains to the Pacific Ocean, and East side would flow to the Rockies, and the singularity you dare not forget is “only one meal a week, less if you’re pregnant.”
Nice to know that even the highest and farthest are neither pristine nor chaste – and the Blueliner’s are clinging to something that isn’t blue at all, it’s merely less brown, less odiferous than what I wade in and call home.
The report on Donner Lake’s ailments and contaminants has just been released by CALEPA.
Average size of brown trout sampled = about 20 inches (512 mm). Not bad! Just don’t eat them.
Point of correction. Donner Lake does not drain into the Pacific nor does it drain to the Rockies. It drains into the Truckee River that flows east into Pyramid Lake the remnants of an ancient inland sea.
Cscott: Your geography is correct, but I read this passage as meaning drainage from the Sierra’s massif, which on the west side drains into the pacific, while the east side (of the “Sierra’s”) drains to the Rockies… But “Sierra’s” ??? I read this as an example of the bold New Journalism of this raw century, with it’s abandonment of stodgy old conventions based on dead languages and moribund institutions.
He He …and I was going to correct it.
Geesh, you’all need a geography lesson here.
EVERYONE knows that water from Pyramid Lake drains into Lake Tahoe as PROVEN by small fishing boats having disappeared from the former and later showing up bobbing-sans fisherman-in the latter.
Yur welkum.