Some lakes ask to be admired. Lake Tahoe asks to be entered. Its water holds a clarity so complete that sunlight travels fifty, sometimes seventy feet down before it surrenders, casting the shallows in a turquoise that belongs more to the Caribbean than the Sierra, and the depths in a blue so dark it reads as bottomless. Granite peaks rise around the entire basin, holding their snow into June, framing the water like something meant to be approached slowly and left reluctantly. There is a stillness that settles over the surface in late afternoon, just before the light turns gold, that no photograph quite manages to hold onto. It has to be stood in.
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