MONOLAKE

By

ADRIAN SALINAS

Sound By
Sistema Macaco Sonoro

TRT. 20:14 

2009

MONOLAKE NATIONAL PARK
One of the planet's most surreal landscapes,
features bizarre tufa spires and a lake more
than 1 million years old.
It is one of the 100 Parks considered for closing by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger due to budget cuts.
This video puts a face on this beautiful natural treasure,
that will now no longer be accessible to us.

"There are no fish in Mono Lake no frogs, no snakes,
no pollywogs nothing, in fact, that goes to make life desirable.
Millions of wild ducks and seagulls swim about the surface,
but no living thing exists under the surface,
except a white feathery sort of worm, one half an inch long,
which looks like a bit of white thread frayed out at the sides.
If you dip up a gallon of water, you will get about fifteen thousand
of these. They give to the water a sort of grayish-white appearance.
Then there is a fly, which looks something like our house fly.
These settle on the beach to eat the worms that wash ashore
and any time, you can see there a belt of flies an inch deep and
six feet wide, and this belt extends clear around the lake a belt of flies
one hundred miles long.
If you throw a stone among them,
they swarm up so thick that they look dense,
like a cloud."

Mark Twain
"Roughing It."
1872