Tomorrow will mark a week since we left the chaos of our lives in Portland. I now find myself a couple days into a several day stay in Lake Tahoe. On our first night in Tahoe City we played at Fat Cat Bar & Grill, first competing with various sports events on television. Just as I thought no one was listening and resigned to being strictly background music, a group of rambunctious women out on the town for a birthday walked in, started dancing to our music and and having a great time and thus made the evening that much better. The stars were so bright afterward outside our hotel. Sitting by the lake, I tried to just breathe and be, still reeling from the days and moments that lead up to that particular space in time.
On to South Lake Tahoe the next day, playing at Benko Art Gallery in the afternoon on Cinco de Mayo. The strangeness of casinos across the street from us, the afternoon mountain thunder and rain overwhelming me. The sweetness of seeing Chris meet up with his childhood friends at our gig then staying with them (our gracious hosts Heather and Pete) over the next few days. Nora is loving the water and the woods.
Today we drove the entire circumference of Lake Tahoe plus up to Truckee and Donner Lake. My fascination with the Donner party pushing me to purchase a book on the subject at the Donner Memorial State Park gift shop. I see the evidence of a hard winter all around: mangled signs that have been plowed over, road lines scraped out of existence, raging waters. In this quiet time between ski season and summer, we find the roads nearly deserted.
I am still getting used to the fact that I don’t have a house anymore, that this movement will be permanent for a while. Things are different but I am still me, Chris is still Chris and Nora is still a pups. We’re just moving around more.