Mono Basin Journal

A roundup of quiet happenings at Mono Lake

by Geoffrey McQuilkin

WWith glowing sunsets and warm breezes, pink desert peach blossoms and red paintbrush shining amidst white tufa, afternoon thunderstorms and songbirds seemingly everywhere all at once, memories of the cold, deep snows of the long winter have faded. Yet winter’s legacy remains, and now the snowmelt shapes the season.

Water is the story of the day. Water in every draw, wash, ephemeral drainage, and creek that offers a path to Mono Lake. Water flooding the highway, carving chasms through local dirt roads, and sheeting across meadows. In Rush, Lee

Vining, Mill, Parker, and Walker creeks the snowmelt is thundering down, mobilizing cobbles and boulders into a rocky chorus that sings a story of the power of water.

And waiting to receive winter’s liquid bounty is Mono Lake, shimmering in the summer sun, rising quickly. The 40 miles of lake shoreline are changing fast as the lake pushes upward and outward, sand berms building and moving, tufa submerging into the underwater world where it formed. As we celebrate the rise, we hope—and we work and we advocate—to never again see Mono Lake at such a perilously low level. 

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