Introducing Ourselves and Opening the Door to a New Fall Part 1

September 1st, I hiked into the most popular, hiking destination here on the Tahoe National Forest in the Central Sierra Nevada of California: Loch Leven Lakes. I'd been there several times. By writing magazine articles about the vicinity as a great fall destination, I too have sung the praises of the area. However, I try to avoid the beautiful lakes during hectic summer seasons. When I return, I come in the back door, the Salmon Lake Trail. In the 18 years I've lived here, the main trail from Big Bend off I-80 has been pounded and washed away from a good trail to much of it little more than an eroded channel of ankle-punishing stepping stones. Too many of us are loving this once natural location to death.

That day on the cusp of fall, my memories anticipated the returning hues of the season. Colorful willows and other shrubs dotted around the cobalt blue lakes have always inspired me. Each fall, waters of high-mountain lakes seem even more azure against the cornflower blue of skies streaked by, at least, five shades of white, bulbous clouds. By displaying flamboyant yellows shining with the vivid glow of hundreds of candles, the few quaking aspen in the area always find time to celebrate another year of survival in this rugged landscape. Their leaves flicker as vividly as flames fluttering in the tiniest of breeze. Their bright, neon yellow, twinkling lights glow against the muted gray granite and dark green trees as prayer candles in church. For me, just as inspirational.

That day, years after retiring as Forest Supervisor of the Tahoe National Forest, I returned to Loch Leven Lakes looking for the first hints of a new fall. Testimony we survived another year. Readying ourselves for a new spring.

My ongoing goal for the past 17 years is to visit every outdoor recreation location and hike all of the trails here in our 4-million plus acres beyond my home towns of Grass Valley / Nevada City. To date, I've concentrated on the Tahoe and Eldorado National Forests, along with adjacent State Parks and other lands open to the public. Now I'm returning to many of the areas taking digital photographs so that I can include them not only with this blog but throughout location descriptions in www.SierraOutdoorRecreation.com. Our website that started as my son Ian and my "little father-son project."

Ian is the computer whiz. I am the link from a digitized world to a real one. To date, we've included over 900 locations, visited and encapsulated in well-over 1000 pages of on-line descriptions and directions. Including nearly 3-million acres of updated maps and hundreds of photographs. Within a year or so, my friends and I will be adding maps plus all the locations in the Lake Tahoe Basin, Hope Valley and their neighborhoods. In short, everything east to west between Highway 395 in Nevada plus California and Highway 49 in California, west of Reno to Auburn. Also, north to south between the North Yuba River and Lakes Basin to North Fork Mokelumne River, south of Sierraville to Jackson. Each help define our backyard here in the Central Sierra Nevada.

I'm hoping I'll never finish. With my health limitations of lousy arterial plumbing and sometimes erratic heart, I've had to slow my ascent of the mountains. I'll never run out of reasons to eagerly get up every morning looking forward to a new day. My intention is to add locations and additional information as long as He – or She – decides I'm doing useful work by introducing us to Mother Nature at his/her best. I can't retire; hopefully, I can't be retired, until I'm done.

We've continued our introductory New Info Blog by carrying onto Part 2 as a second blog posted today and listed below. Continue to Part 2.