Northern Lake Tahoe is still having these odd (to me) spring snow storms, wherein the weather will be cool but sunny one moment and dumping snow the next. A completed round of golf these days is by no means a sure bet, as one moment you can be enjoying your self-induced misery on the links and the next moment scurrying to get one more hole in before the course is covered with fresh powder. For someone unaccustomed to one season being all that different from another, this dramatic change in weather conditions is another reminder that we aren’t in the Bay Area anymore, Toto.
Toto, or Charlie, in my case, LOVES the snow for some unknowable canine reason. The novelty of the snow continues to fascinate him and as soon as he’s set free into the power he gambols and frolics like a giant black German Shepherd bunny. It’s all fun and games until he hits an unexpected patch of ice and goes ass over teakettle into a stack of firewood. I don’t think he blushes under his thick coat of fur, and there’s no I Meant To Do That look on his face. He just gets up and away he goes back into the soft stuff as if nothing had happened.
Things certainly do happen in this weather, however. Yesterday was the first sudden snowfall in a couple of weeks, and as I collected my coffee-flavored water from the Starbucks at the Kings Beach Safeway, I noticed a photographer in the parking lot. He had what looked like an Arca-Swiss view camera on a fancy carbon-fiber tripod and Really Right Stuff ball head, set up to photograph the fresh snow on the cherry blossoms that decorate this particular parking lot. “What a nice photograph that would make,” I thought, as Charlie and I shivered in the truck. I didn’t have my gear with me, and I’m always hesitant to go over and take the same photograph someone is already making. But I thought I’d take a crack at getting something good if we got some more snow that night.
Turns out we did, but those of you who are more familiar with snow life than I may see the punch line coming. The photograph above is also a pretty obvious clue. When I returned to the parking lot this morning, I did find snow on the cherry blossoms, but I also found that the sudden cold had killed the blooms that the morning before had been pink and perfect, not yet having had time to wither and fade. Timing is everything, and yesterday morning was the time to get this photograph. I should’ve gone back to the cabin for my gear that moment. Oh well, I’ll know for next spring. Another bit of local knowledge gained…
