Orion Magazine

The Extraordinary Disorder of Obsidian

of the turquoise eye of Mono Lake just east of the Sierra’s steep escarpment are hills that once hissed and groaned, gushed fountains of pumice and ash and sticky masses of incandescent lava. Today, wandering among the range of stubby volcanic hills leads you across piles of pumice that grind and crunch underfoot. Daliesque spires of black, lichen-spotted

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