Lake Tahoe: a "Peak Experience"
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Now, I'm winding around these cliff-edged roads with this magnificent vista on my right. Bob Dylan's talking, no longer sardonic, looking back on his life in a 60th-birthday interview, and I feel I'm seeing magnificent, snowy peaks at the same time my ears and mind are glorying in some of the peaks of human articulation, of great art. There are no words to describe this kind of joy, this kind of satisfaction. It's the kind of thing one lives for. The rest is silence, as Shakespeare said.
Then, driving down into the outskirts of South Tahoe, where I've never been before, I come upon this:
It's standing in front of a souveneir shop called Alpaca Pete's. The unity of these faces carved into a single tree trunk, and the grief etched on those faces blows my mind even further.
I have to find out more, so I go in, crossing myself, so to speak, as I pass in front of a row of carved "California bears" like the one we inherited in front of our condo, that Barbara can't stand:
The proprietor, a nice fellow whose appearance was more what one might have expected in a surfing shop, knew only that the piece was obtained in '92 from a gentleman of the Win-Tun tribe of northern California. I continued on my journey.
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On the right is a little gecko sculpture I bought at Alpaca Pete's, an image from a native American petroglyph. It's shown here displayed with other objects at our home. |
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Crossing into Nevada, as you know if you've been to Lake Tahoe, you find a little bit of "Vegas". Here's a little album of my brief journey through the lovely Tahoe region, before I headed out into the winding hills on 50, toward Carson City.
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Most of these pictures speak for themselves. As for the "exclusive" of the inside of Tahoe Bowl — let's just say I get a lot of places I wouldn't otherwise have gone, simply because I'm an oral guy, always chomping ice or drinking something. And it follows that I'm a frequent seeker-out of "certain rooms". |