Journeys›Photograph

Looking at Houses Around Truckee

·Truckee, California, United States·#california#summer#sierra nevada#truckee#architecture
A red log cabin with a shingle roof, a deck with red picnic tables, and a yellow umbrella surrounded by trees.

A day of walking through other people's houses around Truckee. First an old log cabin down among the pines — logs painted rust red, a stone chimney running the full height of the gable, a wagon wheel leaned against its base, and a long deck lined with built-in benches. Someone had a yellowed Schweppes umbrella set up out front like it had been there thirty years, and it probably had.

From there we drove up out of the trees to newer places on the ridges. Big decks, fire pits, lots that open onto brush and rock instead of lawn. One house had a dining room with windows on two walls, all of them full of forested hills going back in layers. Hard to argue with that, though downtown sits at almost 6,000 feet and the town averages about 201 inches of snow a year, so every one of those decks means a lot of shoveling.

The cabin stuck with me more than the views did. Nobody builds chimneys like that anymore.

A log cabin with a stone chimney, red deck, and old wagon wheel stands among pine trees.A dense evergreen forest fills a valley with hazy distant mountains under a clear blue sky.A wooden deck features a lounge chair, a rug, and a patio set, overlooking a dense forest under a clear blue sky.Tall evergreen trees stand in a forest, with dry brush in the foreground and distant mountains under a clear blue sky.Wooden deck with a table, chairs, and flowers, overlooking a house, road, and forest under a blue sky.A forest of pine trees with dry grass and dirt in the foreground under a clear blue sky, distant mountains visible.A sunlit hallway with terracotta tiles and wood trim leads to an outdoor view of a forested mountain through a glass door.A dining room featuring a long wooden table, chairs, and large windows revealing a sunlit forested mountain view.

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