This is Wanda Lake, a little more than 11,000 feet. The glacier behind the lake on the 13,000-foot peak has been there centuries, perhaps thousands of years.
I have always wondered what this place looks like in winter. There are no Webcams at Wanda, which was named after one of John Muir's daughters.
When we camped at Wanda two years ago, it was late August. We were in the midst of an eight-day trek on the Muir Trail. The night-time temperature was in the high 20s. The silence was broken only by the dripping of the melting glaciers. So soothing.
It is a barren, treeless basin. It could be mistaken as a wasteland of broken granite and icy wind. It is not. It is the frontier, the place where some life retreats to survive. If the hearty creature or flower cannot compete at lower elevations, it can find refuge here. If it can find food. And if it can survive the night.
And the winter.
Beneath the snow and wind-scoured peaks right now, high-mountain flowers are hunkered down, dormant and waiting for better times. Deep roots sustain them, huddled in the shelter of talus and scree fields.
Burrowed deep in rock crevices, the smallest creatures hide from the cold. They live at the edge of starvation for weeks. They breathe the thin air and hold on.
It is a bright new year for us. For them, it is the long winter night in an alpine wonderland.
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