Geology reveals that the San Andreas Fault created the San Jacinto Mountains: a curve in the fault, where the fault bends towards the Pacific, created them.  As one tectonic plate rammed into another along the fault, an edge turned up and crumbled to make the mountains.  Erosion sculpted the edge into the shapes we now see.

Geology reveals that mountains are detritus.

Biology reveals that life in the San Jacinto Mountains, and everywhere, is the product of great fecundity and an almost equal portion of death.

Biology reveals that life is waste.

The truth that science tells is macabre.

A new friend, my wife and I spent the last day and night of May in the San Jacinto Mountains at a place in the wilderness named Caramba to survey the detritus and waste.  I took the photo above as darkness covered the mountains at the end of May.  The lights are in Palm Springs.  The San Andreas Fault runs along the base of the dark mountains in the background.  I took the photo below earlier in the afternoon at Tahquitz Creek and the one below it from the door of my tent on the first morning of June.  It shows the sun rising over the San Andreas Fault.

The truth science tells is cold and mean.

The heat rising up from the desert below Caramba kept us warm at night and a breeze from the ocean so many miles away kept us cool in the day.  Sunset and sunrise, mountains and waterfalls, boulders and vistas, trees and flowers, deer and birds:  Caramba.