Mid-October Days by the Water at Tahoe

Mid-October and the lake has mostly emptied out. Started on the sand down at Tahoe — buoys still bobbing offshore with nothing tied to most of them, a single duck working the shallows near a stump half-buried in the beach. Then up a creek drainage into the mountains, where the aspens have gone full yellow against the pines. The trail passed a string of ponds sitting so still the whole ridgeline came back upside down, grass around the edges already turned brown. Followed the creek back down over the granite ledges to a smaller lake ringed in forest, then made it back to the shore in time to watch the sun drop behind the range across the water.

October up here swings from the twenties overnight to the sixties by afternoon, and you feel every degree of that on a beach at dusk. Next morning the lake was flat glass, no wind at all, the far mountains doubled in the surface and one contrail dragged across the blue.