Things That Shouldn’t Be There

These tufa formations by all rights shouldn’t be there. Well, they should be there but they shouldn’t be THERE! Where they should be is fully submerged below the surface of Mono Lake. These iconic towers are now destination attractions largely because the city of Los Angeles diverted water for decades, inadvertently drastically lowering the level of the huge inland sea and leaving the tufa high and dry. Created by fresh water springs emerging from the bottom of the alkali lake, calcium carbonate built up like stalagmites over the centuries. It took less than one of those centuries for us to turn these living underwater sculptures into crumbling surface artifacts.

That said, if we could fix it all and turn back time to when the water was at its natural level, another thing that wouldn’t be there would be me. – jg

All Photographs © 2020 Sharon Lobel Photography or John Grusd Photography. All Rights Reserved.