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The Tahoe Diaries: Cliff Jumps & Midnight Swims
When you’re napping and set to lounge around on a dock with your friend, and you get an invite to go cliff jumping, you say yes. Say yes to any adventure, for that matter. There’s nothing quite like climbing a makeshift rope ladder up an exposed rock 30 feet in the air during a thunderstorm. Especially when lightning is less than a mile off (if we counted right) and you’re scared of heights, like me. Climbing, however, committed me to the jump. I got up there after my friends, Katelyn, Jakob, and Patrick, and we immediately sorted out that I was going first. My knees trembled ever so slightly and…
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An Examination of Life’s Characters in Tahoe
The Setting: The liftie life in Tahoe: It’s 7:45 a.m. and the tenured lifties (people who work as lift operators at a ski resort) just lit their second bowl of the day. This time, it’s on the gondola ride up to the top of the mountain. Olympic Valley unfurls beneath the gondola, snow capped peaks and exposed boulders edging past, pristine, untouched slopes glinting in the morning light. The lifties climb on the seats, yanking open the plastic windows to let their smoke out, and pry the doors of the gondola open to dump the burnt flower into the wind. A lot of lifties don’t immediately engage with you. You…
