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I have the good fortune of living in Tahoe, surrounded by the vast amazing wilderness
of the Sierra Nevada. I'm not a skier or snowboarder, so I enjoy the winter beauty of
the mountains from inside, where it's warm and cozy. I have my desk set up so that my
monitor and the view across the lake at Freel Peak, Pyramid Peak, Mount Tallac, and
Dick's Peak are in one and the same line of sight.
The summer, however, is a different matter.
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In the summer, I go out in the wilderness as much as I can. Of course, having spent so much time
in the Tahoe Sierra and the surrounding areas, I know of some secret places where I can go on
any given weekend in July and have a lake of Zen-like beauty or a canyon with cottonwoods and
laughing waters all to myself. But that's not something to be shared on the Internet. You have
probably found your own already.
I have three hiking stories that are perhaps worth telling.
The first one is the story of me
In the Footsteps of Jack Kerouac on Matterhorn Peak,
outside of Bridgeport, California, retracing the steps of Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder (a.k.a. Japhy Ryder)
as described in Kerouac's timeless classic "The Dharma Bums."
The second one is the story of The Long Hike,
a 180 mile walk that took me from Nevada City in the California Gold Country all the way back home to South Lake
Tahoe.
Trivia question: what is the connection between these two stories? There is always a connection! Click
here for the answer.
The third story takes place not in the Sierra Nevada but in the
Cahuilla Indian country of the Western Colorado Desert in the south east corner of
California, outside of Anza-Borrego State Park. That story, not unlike the first one, has a literary
connotation. It is embedded in some musings on Dostoyevsky's quote on Christoper Columbus, from his novel
“The Idiot.”
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