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I am reading John Muir’s, “My First Summer in the Sierras,” published in 1911.

Note the horse hoof tracks in the sand, these are the wild mustangs of Mono Lake:

https://cindyknoke.com/tag/mono-lake-wild-horse-photography

Muir’s diary is replete with his illustrations.

As I walked where he walked, I was struck,

by how he views nature as a sacrament.

He finds not just solace here,

but spiritual joy.

Of Mono Lake, he wrote, “I never beheld a place where beauty was written in plainer characters or where the tender fostering hand of the Great Gardener was more directly visible.”

He went all over the world,

but his name and imprint are all over California forests and trails, and the university I attended.

He called Mono Lake “a marvel,” and knew the brine shrimp were the only permanent residents of “the ancient lake.”

He wrote this in 1869 and he couldn’t be more correct today. He traveled on foot in The Sierras with pencil and paper. I wonder how he knew all this?

Thousands of migrating birds rely on the lake’s brine shrimp for sustenance as they migrate every year.

Los Angeles continues to siphon water from the lake and the lake continues to dry and shrink.

My Scottish immigrant grandmother who arrived in the US in the early 1900’s never read John Muir, but she loved Scotland, and so did he.

Cheers to you from The Scotsman of The Sierras~

See: https://vault.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/my_first_summer_in_the_sierra/