I work on the top floor in a glorious building on an immaculate campus in the middle of nowhere, although technically in Redwood City. We have spectacular views of various cities on the so-called peninsula, but most notably, views of several shallow rectangular holding ponds that for months have been filled with the strangest reddish water I’d seen for some time.(A satellite view courtesy of Google is here. Our building is in the zoo of buildings just above the weird pink ponds, the second from the left.)

These ponds are owned by Cargill Salt. I guess they fill them with water from the bay, then let them dry. All summer long, I’d been staring at the ponds as they turned redder and redder and seemed to get shallower and shallower. The other day, I noticed some small white mounds sticking out of the ponds. I assumed they were salt but did not think much of it. I did notice the colour of the ponds changing dramatically that day at work, but thought it was just a trick of the light as the sun was reflecting off it directly.

After the long Labour Day weekend, I drove to work and was started to see the pond all white. I was in Utah last summer, and drove through the Great Salt Flats, and this was pretty much exactly the same. In the matter of just a few hours, the last of the water dried up, leaving behind pure salt flats. It looked like it had snowed in September.

It made me want to get out my ice skates and give it a go.