Glide over a valley meadow and it is no longer flat green felt. It is mottled wet and dry, with willow lines. Meadows and the gentle shores of ponds and creeks below the treeline keep their grass and soil to the water’s edge, so no pale gravel blotches lie on them; only glacial tarns on scoured rock keep rock and gravel shores.
Sage country changed the same day. Its bare soil and grit are the gray-brown of the east side instead of pale granite grit, far sagebrush reads as gray-green crowns, the small rock patches read as weathered outcrops with sage around them, and the band from 110 to 240 m past the near shrubs is no longer bare.
Still open on November 5: the meadow reads a bit dark from glide height next to photos.
