Tahoe Living

Before BlogHer, Darcy and I drove up with the twins to have a good ole fashioned Tahoe Vacation.

Lake Tahoe and I go…way back.

When I was a youngster, back when I had no fear, my dad and I would tear up the Intermediate runs at Heavenly. I was low to the ground and I would beg him to abandon the black diamond runs to try to race me.

Then we began to frequent Tahoe in the summer. Tahoe in the summer is glorious. The weather is nearly perfect each day, free from fog, unlike the Bay Area. The glorious Lake is such a vibrant, specific color that it is both a paint chip and an environmental cause. My auntie Marian used to drive me up to the Lake in her vintage 60s red Porsche. We would stop at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe and drink strawberry Daiquiris. (Mine were Virgin.)

When I became college-aged, Tahoe meant something different. My friend would host a party for dozens at her family’s lakeside condo. She was a daredevil, and would drive her family’s vintage wood boat (a vestige of their most prosperous days) into the wake created by the biggest ferry on the North Shore. Once, she drove so hard into a wake that our friends on the pier thought we had sank into the deep. But, we hadn’t.

My college boyfriend was a Skier. A double-diamond running, kick-turning genuine Warren Miller wannabe. Since I had become a summer Tahoe person, my skiing skills were suspect, but I had high hopes. My boyfriend’s friend, a kind instructor, a future Navy Seal, decided to teach me how to ski properly, at top of Squaw Valley’s Mountain Run. He was a little inebriated at the time. In fact, he was wearing the box of a 6-pack on his head.

I was dead sober and very, very scared. I followed his instructions to turn up: and promptly turned straight upwards into a mogul field. Those expert skiers flying down the field were very sore with me. Many curse words were uttered in my direction. Finally, a ski patrolman located me and instructed me to take off my skis and walk down the field.

“Who told you to go this way?” he asked, annoyed and perplexed. I pointed at my friend. “The guy with the 6-pack box on his head?” the ski patrolman asked, with anger.

Indeed.

Since the twins have been born, Lake Tahoe has meant something different. Each summer, we try to visit.

Each year, I am invigorated by the crisp Mountain air, the tall Tahoe Pines, the electric blue Lake.

Tahoe is a part of my soul.

This year, I ran on pristine Alpine trails, I admired the classic style and signs of Kings Beach and I gloried in the knowledge that my children were playing in the meadows where my Mom and I had once built a snowman. My son was looking out from the pier where I once performed daredevil acts. My daughter was learning to swim in a pool where I once swam as if I were a fish.

What I lived in:

Are there places you love to glory in, where you can reclaim your past? Where are they?