Tufa Kayak Sunrise Bliss

At 2 AM on July 6th, I tossed and turned in the back of my pickup truck, despite how comfortable my bed back there is. The waning moon shone bright through the windows of my camper shell. I'm not sure why I couldn't sleep, but I felt the imminent time of my beeping watch alarm looming nearer...still not asleep! Just after 5 AM, I crawled out of my warm cocoon into the cool pre-dawn air. I could hear the dense salty water lapping on the shore of Mono Lake. The air smelled fresh; a new day. I pulled on a waterproof jacket and packed my camera into a dry bag. I stashed my water bottle in the back of my borrowed kayak, clipped myself into a yellow PFD, and slung my binoculars over my shoulder. As I launched the kayak into the thick brine-shrimp filled water, everything else in the world melted away and I slipped into the simple bliss that is Mono Lake at sunrise.

After a half hour paddle across open water, I began to weave into the Tufa grove as the sun's rays burst above Paoha Island, glancing of the smattering of clouds, gilding them with peachy gold. The Tufa towers stood tall, silently sillhouetted against the gaudy colors of the morning sky. Tufa is not a word you hear every day. In fact, most of you are probably thinking "Tufa? What the heck is that?" Tufa towers are limestone columns that form under water in Mono Lake. Freshwater underground streams trickle down from the Sierra and bubble up under the lake; on the journey down, they pick up trace amounts of minerals from the earth they traveled through to arrive at Mono; one prevalent mineral is calcium, which reacts with the carbonate-rich lake water and precipitates out to form CaCO3 (Calcium Carbonate), also called limestone. The freshwater is less dense than the twice-as-salty-as-the-ocean lake water, so it rises to the surface of the lake, creating the towering forms of tufa. When the lake drops (like it did drastically after L.A. started diverting water, see "Part 1: "Seagulls" and Politics), the tufa towers are exposed and simply beckon to be photographed.

I truly love the little things in life that remind us that though we may not know exactly why we are here, it is miraculous that we are here at all and that we get to experience the immense beauty the earth has to offer.