Travel: Lake Tahoe
"I have found a dream of beauty at which one might look all one's life and sigh. Not lovable, like the Sandwich Islands, but beautiful in its own way! A strictly North American beauty--snow-splotched mountains, huge pines, red-woods, sugar pines, silver spruce; a crystalline atmosphere, waves of the richest color; and a pine-hung lake which mirrors all beauty on its surface. Lake Tahoe is before me..."
Isabella Bird, September 2, 1873
A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains
Photo: 2017-08-5
Travel: Lake Tahoe
2017-08-5. Ten years ago today I was floating over Lake Tahoe in a hot air balloon, part of a trip with colleagues for a job well done. We were allowed to choose a special activity and I jumped at the chance to go up in a hot air balloon. At the time, I didn't know that spousal unit, who acquiesced to my enthusiasm, is afraid of heights.
Unlike the roar and rattle of airplanes, the sensation of leaving Earth in a hot air balloon is so gentle that one isn't aware of motion or ascent— until you look down. Looking down is more frightening at the beginning when you can still gauge how far you have to fall. The higher up you float, the less real the earth below seems, as if one escapes the psychological pull of Earth, the very gravity of it.
Travel: Tahoe
Skating Away On the Thin Ice of a New Day
"Meanwhile back in the year one
When you belonged to no one
You didn't stand a chance son
If your pants were undone
'Cause you were bred for humanity and sold to society
One day you'll wake up in the present day
A million generations removed from expectations
Of being who you really want to be
Skating away, skating away, skating away
On the thin ice of the new day, ay
So as you push off from the shore, won't you turn your head once more
And make your peace with everyone
For those who choose to stay, will live just one more day
To do the things they should have done
And as you cross the wilderness a spinning in your emptiness
You feel you have to pray
Looking for a sign that the universal minds
Has written you into the passion play
Skating away, skating away, skating away
On the thin ice of the new day, ay
And as you cross the circle line, well, the ice wall creaks behind
You're a rabbit on the run
And the silver splinters fly, in the corner of your eye
Shining in the setting sun
Well, do you ever get the feeling, that the story's too damn real
And in the present tense
Or that everybody's on the stage and it seems like you're the only
Person sitting in the audience
2017-8-5.
Skating away, skating away, skating away
On the thin ice of the new day, ay
Skating away, skating away, skating away