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"Trees are as close to immortality as the rest of us ever come." ~ Karen Joy Fowler There’s a small parking lot at Donner Summit, beside the old Rainbow Bridge, where people arrive from all over the country to take in the view. Most step out of their cars, walk a few feet, and stand beside them. Some never get out at all. They lower a window, or simply look through the windshield, take a photograph, and drive away. The other day, I parked there, and began climbing the granite

Mountain Living. Natural Wonders. Community Spirit. September 2026 96146 Rainbow In this issue FIREWISE Community Update Next Green Waste Disposal Day Broken Arrow Skyrace Fall Course Preview & Training Run Oktoberfest Returns to Olympic Valley Adopt-A-Highway Update A Special Tribute to Osvaldo Ancinas Firewise Community Update California’s new Zone 0 rules will change how millions of homeowners landscape the first five feet around their homes, and what

Sun Dog / Olympic Valley "He ended: and a kind of spell Upon the silent listeners fell. His solemn manner and his words Had toched the deep, mysterious chords That vibrate in each human breast alike." ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from Tales of a Wayside Inn It has many names. Some of us call it heaven: an everlasting garden, a realm beyond sorrow where light never fades, love is never lost, and every living thing exists in perfect belonging and in perfect harmony. Across l

Part of Tahoe’s enchantment is that the scale shifts constantly. One moment you’re gazing at a vast alpine basin carved by glaciers. The Lake fades into the clouds, which then melt into the mountains. The next moment, a cluster of thumb-sized leaves becomes as fascinating as the mountain range. “The landscape belongs to the person who looks at it.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson Contemporary British author and nature writer, Robert Macfarlane, would say that landscapes reveal themselv

The ancient Greeks believed there was a place beyond the ordinary world called Elysium. It was a peaceful, sunlit realm reserved for heroic, virtuous, and blessed souls. Homer imagined it at the ends of the earth near the rivers of Okeanos, where life was easy and sorrow was kept at bay. The ancient Roman poet Virgil described it as a rich pastoral and artistic sanctuary with lush, green meadows, where righteous souls were free to pursue arts, music, dance, and athletic games

With advancing artificial intelligence, the blank page may be more important than ever. Writing away at the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur, CA. Writing is thinking. That may be the simplest and most important reason writing still matters, especially now, when technology can compose an essay, summarize a book, finish our sentences, and make us sound more polished than we may actually be. The danger isn’t that AI can write and make us look like we've been studying the

A Collaboration with Anna Stepanova Most stories about social media begin with noise. This one begins with a tree and an unlikely connection with an emerging artist on the other side of the planet. Not just any tree, but a Sierra Juniper... ancient, weathered and wonderfully defiant, growing from the granite high above Lake Tahoe. I photographed it here in Olympic Valley, at an elevation of around 8,000 feet. Nearly 7,000 miles away, an artist named Anna Stepanova discovered

Mountain Living. Natural Wonders. Community Spirit. August 2026 The Meadow In this issue An inside look at the 2026 Olympic Club Trans Tahoe Relay Pulling Together for our Community There's a New Bookshop in Town 2026 Lake Tahoe Ski Club Asado Incorporate North Tahoe / Latest News Next Green Waste Disposal Day Palisades Tahoe Festivities Return Helping the Next Generation Find Their Place in Tahoe with PTCF Winged Juniper stands guard over Olympic Valley. Across Taho

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