An urgent effort to stop Spotted Knapweed, and a BIG THANK YOU to the neighbors who showed up. The meadow can't pull these weeds by itself. It needs its Stewards. Thank you to today’s Stewards of the Valley, who helped eradicate the noxious Spotted Knapweed from our meadow! Ed, Haley and Willa Ed Heneveld spearheads this annual effort, and his daughter, Haley Dow, son-in-law, David Dow, and their daughter, Willa (3 generations!) came to help, along with Susan Lisagor, Ann, Lo

Somewhere between daylight and whatever comes next, I photographed a white cow in a field in Sierraville. She stood alone in the tall grass, illuminated by the last of the golden hour. There was nothing particularly unusual about her. She was, after all, just another cow in cattle country. But some animals seem to belong entirely to the landscape. Others appear to have stepped into it from somewhere else. This one felt like the latter. Maybe it was the color of her coat again

What the rainbow sees. I believe in an ethical life grounded in childlike wonder and a deep sense of gratitude. But where do we find such a life in a world that pulls our attention in every direction, except, too often, towards what matters most? For me, it begins by climbing through the manzanita of Lake Tahoe and visiting the ancient, living magic of these mountains. It's found while wandering the jagged edge of Big Sur, where land and sea collide with such power that the w

Art by Robert Longo I saw a piece from Gapingvoid.com recently about fireworks, and it stayed with me. The point wasn’t really about fireworks. It was about memory. Most of us don’t look back on work and remember the compensation plans, the meetings, or the product launches. Not really. We remember the moments. The rituals. The pressure. The laughter. The stories that somehow outlived the business plan. And it got me thinking about the places where work felt like more than wo

Mountain Living. Natural Wonders. Community Spirit. July 2026 Welcome to the 12th issue of 96146 News - our first full year! What began as a simple effort to keep Olympic Valley neighbors informed continues to grow into something more useful, more meaningful, and more connected. We do our best with each monthly issue to share local updates that matter: community news, Firewise information, pedestrian safety progress, Stewards of the Valley engagements, upcoming events,

One early morning a man stood beneath the wide sky and called out: “Heavenly Spirit, speak to me. Let me know You are real. Let me know You are here.” Just then, a falcon landed nearby and stared at the man below. But the man didn’t hear a voice. So he called out again, louder this time: “Creator, please, if You are there, let me hear You.” The sun was rising behind the mountains and lit up like a Monet masterpiece. The Lake reflected the broad brush strokes of orange, blue a

What the Olympic Valley Post Office, Kurt Vonnegut, and the strangers we meet can teach us about being human View from Eagle Rock, Lake Tahoe. Even clouds conspire to help frame the composition. Every day, we pass through the lives of people whose stories we don’t know. The hiker we pass climbing Eagle Rock (see photo above). The cashier who looks tired but still manages to smile. The man walking the same old dog every morning, rain or shine. The neighbor we say hello to but

Some classrooms have walls, chalkboards, rows of desks, and bells that tell you when to stop learning. Mine had none of those things. My classroom was Cat Island, in the Bahamas. And my teacher was Beverley Benner (in photo below). Bev Benner with dad’s Tradewind N6640R When I was a child, Bev tutored my sister and me in the ordinary subjects — math, English, geography, science, biology — things every child is supposed to learn. But what stayed with me wasn't simply the multi

Have you heard of the Broken Windows Theory? The idea is simple: when people see broken windows, graffiti, litter, and neglect, they begin to assume nobody is paying attention. Nobody cares. And when that happens, standards slowly erode. One broken window becomes two. A little trash becomes a lot. Neglect breeds neglect. But over the past seven years, I've become convinced there's an opposite force at work here in Olympic Valley. Call it the Reverse Broken Windows Effect. It

If Leonidas were a tree. G.K. Chesterton once suggested that the world isn't lacking in wonders, only in our willingness to notice them. Trees are storytellers... archives of weather, memory, and myth. They don't care if they're noticed, or if we listen to what they have to say. But I invite you to notice these saints on the mountains by our home in Olympic Valley and the surrounding area, and imagine the stories they could tell. If you're willing to notice them, I believe yo

Morning light was spilling across the cemetery. It was unusually quiet as if the melody of birds and cicadas was being absorbed by the trees. I had been wandering among the markers with the same interest that often leads me up a forest trail or along a riverbank. Reading names. Dates. Small clues left behind about lives once lived. Most of the tombstones followed a familiar pattern: Beloved husband. Cherished mother. A favorite verse. An emblem of belief. A life summarized i

The ancients believed that Prometheus meant "Forethinker"—one who could see beyond the horizon, beyond the moment, beyond what others could perceive. In Buddhism, a similar idea exists in the word Prajna: a direct insight into reality, an ability to see things as they truly are. This is a short story about an insect I encountered, named, and came to know - Prometheus, a Praying Mantis... and a few unexpected lessons from one of nature's most fascinating creatures. The word ma

Without Leaving Earth There’s a myth we’ve come to believe, that to truly understand Earth, you have to leave it. You need a rocket. A viewport. A billionaire’s invitation or a government’s blessing. You need to rise high enough where the world becomes a fragile blue marble suspended in total darkness. It’s known as The Overview Effect. Astronaut Christina Koch described it this way: “looking through the cupola, seeing Earth whole, wrapped in a thin blue—and sometimes green—l

“My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth's loveliness.” ~ Michelangelo The Lake A moment of enchantment Can you imagine a more perfect Lake? Where the water is fresh and pure and its color shifts from Caribbean blue to emerald green on a whim. Surrounded by boulders big and small. And mountains rising along its edges as if lifting the Lake up for the Gods to drink. Is there such a place on earth? The Meadow A moment of revelation. Can you imagine a

Fine Art Photography from Olympic Valley & Beyond Something out there awakens something inside you. As a photographer, the fun is capturing those moments and sharing them... not just how they look, but how they make you feel . Because the right image doesn’t decorate a space, it changes how you experience it. We spend much of our lives moving quickly past exceptional moments. After all, a tree is just a tree. A sunset is just a sunset. Or is there magic in these moments

What it feels like being there I. The Setup Before anything begins there’s already tension. Resistance. Structure and openness. Order and unpredictability. A board set for decisions placed at the edge of something immeasurable. Two chairs face the horizon. No one sitting. And yet you can feel the presence. This is where experience starts: Not in action, but in awareness. II. Endurance Some things don’t just exist. They persist . Wind-shaped. Time-carved. Half living, half mem

A BlueWolfGallery Manifesto “ Many men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with their song still in them. ”~ Henry David Thoreau Beneath our restless pursuit of wealth and even happiness, there's a deeper, more ancient longing, one that can't be bought, but is readily available. It's the desire to feel fully alive. Not merely to exist, or to move through our days on autopilot, but to be awake. To feel the pulse of the world as something glowing and immediate w

A pilot’s lesson about tailspins and the strange way we sometimes find our way back. Every pilot eventually learns a strange and vital truth about flying: Sometimes the harder you try to fix a problem, the worse it becomes. There’s a moment in a tailspin when the horizon begins to rotate outside the cockpit window. The ground and sky trade places in a slow, tightening spiral, and every instinct tells you to pull back, climb, fight it, and force the airplane back into the sky.

Sunset Tahoe City "The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn’t it be?—it is the same the angels breathe." ~ Mark Twain, Roughing It There’s a rhythm to Lake Tahoe that goes beyond its turquoise water and towering pines. It’s a vibe, a heartbeat, steady and ancient, yet somehow familiar. It slows our own racing thoughts when we pause and truly take it in. Tahoe City Pier Being here, you experience a deep, intuitive sense of we

Both statements are true. Washeshu Creek facing east in Olympic Valley. Economist and Nobel laureate Paul Romer draws a distinction I keep returning to, especially in uncertain times like we're in at the moment. He describes two kinds of optimism. One is passive optimism . It’s the feeling of a child waiting for presents on Christmas morning. This kind of optimism assumes good things will arrive on their own, that progress is inevitable, that someone or something else will d