Mono Lake, California

The alarm rings at three in the morning, for which I curse having shared whiskeys with drinkers and jokers in Lee Vining the night before. I have coffee to make, and a walk along a lake, here from a perch in the dirt under my truck, under the shadow of the Sierra Nevadas. I am not quite sure why I am here, but sometimes that is the way travel goes. No answers, at least not yet.

Wilson's Phalaropes - migratory shorebirds - and the Kutzadika'a shared in common a palette for a particular fly. The Alkali fly - Ephedra hyans - dislodges his head and inflates a large sac between his head and neck to pop his pupa shell. A natural scuba diver; small hairs on the body of Ephedra hyans create for his small black body a droplet of air which can keep him underwater for quite some time.

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