I stopped walking.

On the shore of Sand Harbor Sate Park, my feet sunk an inch in the wet sand as I looked southwest across the lake at the rocky peaks rising above the tree line.

My wife, Lynn, our Jack Russell Terrier, Archie, and I were on a Sunday morning walk in late March.

Across Lake Tahoe from where we stood, the high slopes held 30% of their normal snowpack, a brittle, white exoskeleton clinging to their rocky surfaces under a blue sky streaked with the long tails of a few cirrus clouds.

Mid-morning temperatures had already reached over 60º Fahrenheit on their way into the 70s.

Lynn let Archie off leash and we continued strolling.

The dog climbed over some granite boulders clustered a few feet offshore, then he made me feel weightless as Lynn and I watched him leap between the rocks.

She laughed.

The sun’s heat on my cheekbones grounded my quick flight, reminding me of how living here through this atypical warm, dry weather can ignite the Tahoe Basin’s wild core.

Wildfire is part of the Tahoe’s natural design.

A 2017 University of Nevada Cooperative Extension publication, Fire Adapted Communities, reports that frequent fires occurred around the lake for thousands of years.

Prior to European-American settlement, fires happened on average every five to 18 years, according to USDA Forest Service data, which the report cites.

These burns, often low-intensity, on the forest floor cleared out layers of dead pine needles, twigs and other growth creating an “open, park-like forest.”

Old trees with thicker bark than their younger counterparts survived these fires making a forest of mature trees with the layer of vegetation under them much thinner than it is today.

Decades of fire suppression, both a side effect of logging in the late 1800s and public policy, has increased the fuels that feed wildfires.

On Tahoe’s shore that Sunday, I felt both awe and fear.

I enjoyed how the water reflected the blue hue of the warming air and for a brief instant I was flying with my dog.

This day was also part of a warm, snowless draught, drying the thick layers of fire fuels around our home and throughout the basin.

The following Monday afternoon, I was walking Archie through our neighborhood.

Returning to our home, I gazed down, my attention drawn to the feel of how my sneaker soles stuck to our drive’s blacktop.

The Jeffrey Pines in our neighborhood have responded to the warm spring weather, dropping a mist of fine golden sap droplets which stipple the ground.

I led Archie to our front door, each step I made sounding like a rubber shoe sole peeling away from a hard floor covered in dried caramel.

“Hey Andrew!” A voice called. It was a neighbor from across the street.

He told me how living here 26 years and he’d never seen a winter as warm as this year.

He said he’s telling everyone he knows to keep a go bag ready because wildfire risk will be high for the foreseeable future.

“I don’t mean to be all doom and gloom,” he concluded with a short laugh.

“No.” I said. “It’s the world we live in now.”

This place where we live, the Lake Tahoe Basin, is a landscape that’s as wild as it is beautiful.

I don’t get excited about changing summer clothes for winter wear, but last week’s swap had a moment that set my pulse racing.

My wife, Lynn, and I live in a townhome with closet space too small to hold both winter and summer wardrobes. One day in mid-November I adopted a semi-squat walking stance, to waddle under the floor-joist-cieling of our home’s crawl space where we store most of our cold weather clothes during the summer. Ten locking lid bins held coats, scarves, hats, and more. Keeping my back and knees bent, I moved each bin to the crawl space door, where I could hand it off to Lynn standing in our garage. Crunched over, kept my head from knocking on the joists, but a strong dull ache gripped my lower back. From the garage, Lynn got the bins up two flights of stairs, into some loft space outside our bedroom.

We haven’t needed winter clothes even during this year’s late fall on Lake Tahoe. The area has seen little snow and has been mostly warm and dry so on a morning last week, my eyes half open as I left our bed’s warm down duveés, I stepped around those bins on the way to the kitchen. My mind wasn’t thinking about winter, only that first bitter sip of a hot cup of dark roast.

Later that morning, as I walked our 17lb. Jack Russel Terrier, Archie, past a closed golf course’s snowless, green fairways, I paused when a wind gust chilled the skin on my bare hands and face. A few miles away, the crumbling granite and volcanic rock summit of Relay Peak, the highest point on the Tahoe Rim Trail, vanished into the clouds. For the first time for me this fall, it felt like I needed to dress in less cotton and more wool.

That afternoon, I started moving my extra shorts out of our bedroom closet, putting some midweight thermal shirts on the newly cleared shelf space. As I placed the shirts on the shelf, a blue-backed white star on the front of a cycling jersey caught my eye. I pulled the shirt of its hangar and holding it in my hands put me back in the saddle of my Seven Alaris road bike. This Radere Lone Star Cycling Jersey was the only one I owned when I trained for the 2024 Triple Bypass, a 118-mile, single-day bike ride with over 10,000 feet of elevation gain crossing three of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain passes.

Grey stains traverse the shirt’s inside collar and back pocket stitching, wash-proof relics of my sweat from the more than 700 miles of riding. The Texas state flag design is not why I bought polyester garment after finding it at a second-hand store. I liked it for the three deep pockets along the lower back, where I could keep energy bars, water bottles, a balaclava, and gloves.

Holding this piece of gear in my hands, I felt like I’d run into an old friend. My heartbeat quickened with excitement as I remembered donning the Lone Star for my first Bypass training ride. That early April day, 6-foot walls of snow lined each side of Juniper Pass’s dry paved road making for a frigid descent back to our Evergreen home. I stumbled into the house before shedding the jersey and wrapping myself in a down coat. I flipped on the ignite switch of our gas fireplace. Seated in front of the flames, my convulsing frame and cold, aching toes gradually warmed.

The jersey reminded me of my slow ascent in late June through the pine forests above Silver Plume, and then through the rock and grass slopes of Loveland Pass where there’s not enough oxygen for trees to grow. I reached the pass’s 11,990-foot summit, confident I was ready to ride the Triple Bypass.

That July morning of the Bypass, Lynn drove me to the start so that I could begin the ride at 5a.m The 118-mile route goes from Evergreen to Avon, Colorado. Lynn and our good friends, Seth and Debbie, would meet me at the finish line, then we would all ride back home in our car.

I stood in front of Lynn, my toes turned upwards in my cleats, feeling a little awkward and nervous about the work ahead of me when our eyes met. The tears forming on her lashes welled up a sadness in my gut and I could feel my own eyes quivering.

“Good luck and be careful. I love you!” She said. But what I think she was really saying was “I’m right here with you. I love you!”

My bike riding, like a lot of things in my life, often fools me into thinking I’m alone. Cold grips my body on a descent or my heart pounds on a steep ascent. The discomfort forces out any other thoughts and all I am thinking about is how to feel better, how to get rid of the hurt. But, I’m not alone. Even when we’re physically apart, myself on the bike, Lynn at the finish line, she’s with me. Before most of my training rides, Lynn made sure I had the right fuel and gear. She constantly encouraged my training.

The mountain views I saw completing the Triple Bypass, the ride’s flight-like descent of Loveland Pass, the refreshing plunge into Avon’s Nottingham Lake after I crossed the finish line, Lynn gave me these gifts.

We still haven’t needed much in the way of winter clothing this fall, but thank god I changed my wardrobe. Right in front of me, was a Lone Star reminding me that Lynn is always with me and she’s given me some things that make my heart race.

Thanksgiving is this week. Time doesn’t move any faster at year’s end than it did 11 months ago, but late November to January often feels like a blur.

My writing is a way to move from blurry feelings to focused insight.

Outside our townhome’s back doors, green grass pokes through the melting snow. In mid-October, landscapers bound the limbs of our trees lining the fences. It’s preparation for the many feet of Eastern Sierra snow that’s yet to fall.

The bare Aspens look like tied twig bundles, while our bound Maple stands like a red-leaf-bunched bouquet. These outdoor changes mark a constantly thumping rhythm. My wife, Lynn, and I want to feel the beats before they’re gone.

A few nights ago, I split some kindling for a fire. The wedges of dried cedar creaked under the splitter’s cleaving iron. The creak, the kindling’s hollow clang, the burning wood’s crackle, are all products of curing these cedar wedges for about seven months.

Lynn started collecting Sugar Pine cones in late April. The cone’s scales often drip with a flammable resin making them a good fire starter. In our fireplace, under the cedar kindling, I placed one of the cones then ignited its scales.

As the fire burned, Lynn and I sat on our couch, enjoying the warm flames.

That night in our living room, we shared a beautiful beat near the end of this year’s pulsing rhythm.

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The Jeffery Pines and the sandy beach on Lake Tahoe’s northeastern shore recede.

My paddle’s blade, submerged at a right angle to the lake’s surface, grabs the cobalt water.

I pull and stand in one fluid motion that propels me and my 11-and-a-half-foot paddle board further out onto the lake. I find a cadence, shifting from reach to plant to stand, then repeat.

Small ripples on the water catch my gaze as they stretch and squeeze the view of the lake bed’s granite boulders.

Each time I paddleboard, the feel is different.

Some days waves heave and drop the board so that keeping my balance demands that my whole stance soften with constant motion. Other times a strong headwind pushes against my course testing my endurance.

But, today under an endless blue sky, on a lake surface rippled by boat traffic and slightly wrinkled by the breeze, I’ve found the perfect glide.

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I start at my default, a mindset that sees the empty post as a chance. The Hello World programming tradition shares my viewpoint.

Hello World is a beginner’s program which computer science professor Brian Kernighan made famous in the book C Programming Language, a book he co-authored with computer scientist Dennis Ritchie.

In an interview, Kernighan recalled a cartoon showing a small chick emerging from a hatched shell as the program’s inspiration. He said the illustration’s caption read hello world.

A chick has the innate ability to become a full-grown bird, maybe a bird that flies. Code can become software.

A Hello World program or Hello World post acknowledges creative potential.

A year ago, I took my first paddle surf lesson. My legs started shaking ten minutes into the hour-long lesson. Several times the rolling surf rocked me off balance. I’d lose my footing on the board then fall into the water.

I managed to catch one wave towards the lesson’s end. When I got to shore, I collapsed into the beach chair next to my wife, Lynn.

“I knew you would catch a wave,” she said, looking me in the eye. “I want you to just go for it on something like surfing. Take more risks!”

Both paddle surfing and my wife were telling me something. When I see potential, I need to take a chance.

It’s time to write!

Hello world!