Lakes and Mountains

The Graduate and I tread carefully around each other. He landed, heavy-eyed with jetlag the day after school finished, was given the briefest of looks at Berkeley before my parents and brother arrived in a silver jeep and whisked us towards Nevada. Four days in and I’m still jumping at the fact that he’s there.  It’s one of the hidden clauses of the long-distance scenario. While the eventual reunion is the climax everyone is pushing for in this long, hard, slog, what you never seem prepared for is that you have actually spent a large amount of time apart. Even if you've emailed and texted and spoken via webcam on almost a daily basis, you have still forgotten how to simply be together. There are small things about him I've completely forgotten. He reminds me of them with a vague frown. Details of Christmas are hazy.

Cabin

What with Thanksgiving and skiing this is my third visit to the lake, this time on the North side in Carnelian Bay. For people visiting California, especially for new and upcoming Berkeley students, I can’t recommend this place enough. Take a weekend away from the campus time and come up here to breathe some proper air. We stayed in a second ridiculous log cabin, this one with huge cathedral windows that have sunlight pouring in on us at all times of day and panoramic views of the cedar pines surrounding the house. I moved from bear territory to bear territory: in the cabin information pack are instructions on how to not get eaten. For the sake of anyone planning a trip up here, who may not be wilderness-savvy:

IF YOU ENCOUNTER A BEAR IN YOUR YARD:

Do not run from him, this may stimulate his instinct to chase.

Let the bear know this is YOUR territory and he doesn't belong there

Don’t be afraid or submissive

Yell at him, bang pots and pans, throw rocks. Make him think you are a bigger bear than he is!  […]

And so on, and so forth.

Emerald Bay

On Tuesday we drove the car up to Emerald Bay, approaching the south side of the Lake, which holds some of the most astonishing scenery in the area. The mountains- still capped with snow, even at the beginning of summer- rear out of the water with such alarming force, you  can’t help but wonder if someone stuck them there as a joke.

Instead of racketing through in a pell-mell taxi ride we stopped this time, and hiked past Eagle Falls down to the beach. There’s a large stone building called the Vikingsholm down there, a little way back from the sand. It was built in 1929 by an American woman who was so impressed by old Nordic Architecture she had a large summer house of Scandinavian design designed and built in the cove. Because the holiday season won’t begin for another month it was shut, but The Graduate and I could get into the stone-flagged courtyard and amble around the perimeter.

We hiked up a lot of hills for the rest of the week, and rafted down the Truckee River, (it does, as the taxi slogan suggests, get you wet), through some Grade III rapids. We each tested the water at Meeks Bay, The Graduate lasting the longest with maybe half a minute of submersion before staggering out with the unanimous shout of ‘WHERE HAVE MY LEGS GONE, THESE APPENDAGES DON’T FEEL LIKE MY OWN” while visiting Californians stood, mouths agape on the sunny shore.  

If you’re going to swim, get a wetsuit first.

The Graduate on the beach. No filters, everything really is that blue. 

Now back in Berkeley, having parted with my mum and dad and arrived within reach of a reliable internet connection, The Graduate and I are gearing up for the next three weeks. Starting in San Francisco, we’re heading down the coast first to LA, then to San Diego, before we trek across the desert to Fabulous Las Vegas. Once we've managed to lose all our money on the blackjack table we’ll fly back to the Bay, possibly chasing The Great Outdoors with Yosemite National Park, or maybe heading to a beach town for a day or two of surfing.

With any luck the internet connections en route will be more reliable than those of the past week, so keep following, and I’ll do my very best to keep the blog posts lively.

Who doesn't love a chipmunk? 

Away we go!