Up over the Sierra with Harriet, petrol cheaper ($3.59) at home than anywhere else,
flying past Gold Run,
Bear Valley,
Emigrant Gap,
Burnt Ridge,
Yuba Pass and the
Transcontinental
Railroad,
getting
off
at
Big
Bend
to
look
around
the
Rainbow
Inn again,
plus Hampshire Rocks
Road.
From
here,
U.S.
40
to
Donner
Pass,
then
down
the
heroic grade
adjacent to snowsheds
and
cliffs
towards the Lake,
picking
up
I-80
more
near
Truckee
and
down
the
River's
amazing
Canyon
of
pinnacles
and
increasing
aridity
to
the
high Nevada desert of Reno Valley.
South on
395,
a quick Starbucks stop,
and we are on the trail at
Whites Creek Park,
up the cleavage of its namesake,
on
the
border
between
alpine and arid,
aspen and Artemisia tridentata (big sagebrush),
the knives of montane vegetation penetrating downslope through these cool drainage systems.
Views intimate and widespread, up and downslope,
with
intrusions of development all the way to
Thomas Creek
Road.
From this check point, reverse course on the gravelly slopes, tumble-down and pucture wounds, but evidently seemingly nothing serious, and we proceed hand-holding past precipices that would surely take us away, but don't.
At last to the car,
downslope in the
spectacular early-evening
sunset
to
Murrieta's for two $1 tacos (beef and chicken) and $2 beers.
Earlier, finish the print issue of October 2013's 21st-Century Music; and, later, compose page 47 of At a Medical Deposition and Psalm 102 on the 195th day of summer, high 84 locally and 79 in the Reno area...
Also finish re-reading Albert Camus's Notebooks: 1935-1942.
