Late June Water Days, Donner and Tahoe

Started at Donner Lake in the morning, when the geese still had the beach to themselves — a dozen or so Canada geese working the shallows inside the buoy line, one standing at the waterline looking like it was supervising the rest. The lake was called Truckee Lake once, and it's a moraine that dams it, which you can almost read in the way the hills pinch together at the far end.

Then the twenty miles down to Tahoe, and the change in scale gets me every time. Donner you can take in whole from the sand; Tahoe just runs out until it hits the far mountains. A long pier off the shoreline path had a single red umbrella out near the end and a couple of boats tied alongside. Paddleboarders were strung out along the flat water near the docks on the north shore.

Still snow on the crest across the lake at the end of June, sitting in patches above the tree line while everyone below it was out in shorts.