I am fully awake now after a nice nap by the river. Making my way back up the river trail to the car, I take one long look back at the willows dipping over the water, get in the car and head for the street where the house my dad and Grandad built in the 1920s still sits.

      Have you ever returned home and felt that depression, that blue mood that comes when nothing is like it was in your memory? Over the years I've had this happen at this spot. Because of that, today it is not all that devastating. I think it was the worst when I was young and memories were much fresher. It's with a certain detachment that I drive past now and see there are more apartments built where the grandparents cabin had been. The house is painted and has additions and is not our house. This is not my town.

      I drive past the school and think how like a dream life actually is. It is solid and real in the moment you live it, and memory keeps it that way, but you can not ever return to the reality of it because it's become a dream. Is a dream truly a reality we have returned to and don't quite recognize? I think so, and Beloved and Smoke Man Dancing are sureof it. Dreams are a reality of their own, as life in the moment has reality, as life in memory has a reality of its own. Layers of realities. My intention becomes more clear to me.

      It is getting on toward dark, and I need to find a place to stay. There's a bed and breakfast in a house built of fieldstone here on the street where I lived many years ago. I earned money dusting in this house for a nice neighbor. The present owners have just two rooms for let overnight, so I book one as a single and have a hot shower and dress to have dinner in a nice, new restaurant on the waterfront right down by the Lake where our swimming pier was many years ago.

      I don't feel nostalgic, but I do feel separate, not in the picture; of it but not in it. I even feel dizzy. The altitude which I am no longer used to is getting to me. I order a scallop and shrimp dish and watch the sun set over the lake. It is early and the dinner crowd is not out yet. My big white sweater is warm enough, but I wonder about morning when it will be cold. I have walked from the bed and breakfast down to the waterfront. It is not a long walk back, but it's up a hill, and I am panting and my arm is very painful and swollen. In my room I lie flat and elevate my arm above my heart level as I have been told to do. I fall asleep with my clothes on.

      When I wake to the fine smell of coffee wafting through the room I think, Beloved, are you with me?, and she is right there. "Well," I say to her, "shall we get breakfast and then go on a trip around the Lake?"

      She sits on the bed, puts a hand on each side of my face as my mother did when I was a child and says, "No, my dear. I am not going. I'm going to visit the trees and the water of this Tahoe, and you are going to go and find your fear and take it out and look at it. You will laugh when you do. Keep laughing. Coyote fools his fear by laughing, and all clowns fool fear and enemies of their life with laughter. You too. Go laughing and play and see what you find. You are not too old, you know, and not too dignified."

      She grabs my foot and pulls me out of bed. Then she pokes her face up close to mine. "What is dignified on a fishing trip? Go. Have fun," and she is gone.

      They proof in and out of my life, and I don't think it's as funny as Beloved thinks it is. One time she proofed into the room where I was getting chemotherapy and asked for a cigarette to smoke in the lobby. I was so mad at her! I could certainly not pull a cigarette out of my pocket and hand it into thin air while I sat in a room with four other people, all of us with tubes in our arms for the poison to be poured.

      I dress in layers. The weather will warm up, and this way I can pull stuff off as I drive. I am wearing my jeans with the tee and a light pullover sweater and a pretty long, heavy cardigan sweater that comes down almost to my knees, so I am warm. After coffee and a piece of toast I say goodbye to my hostess, a lovely person, a stranger who rented me a room and gave me coffee for a start in the morning. After paying her, I am on my way

      I choose to drive around the east end of the lake then up to south shore where all the casinos are. The lake is beautiful. I see many boats, both sailing and motoring. It was not that way in my youth. We had boats but not as many as this. Past is past, and I am not truly enjoying the scenery because my never-ending comparisons are there. If I was seeing Tahoe for the first time, I'm sure I would be impressed, but I remember a wilderness of forest going right down to the lake. There were small enclaves of villas and camps and a few stores here and there, wild beaches with no one on them much even in the tourist season.

      Before World War Two there was not a huge crowd ever anywhere here. We thought it was crowded when fifty people were on the pier watching a speed boat race. There weren’t very many sails on the lake in my childhood.

      The road is all new and widened, and it takes forty-five minutes where it was a two hour drive when I was a kid. Oh well. I am going to a place where it still is wilderness more or less, down Kingsbury pass. This road has also been improved. As I leave the mountain and reach the bottom, the high desert of Nevada opens up before me and I am on my way to Markleville. Driving on this straight road through a brown, sear desert calms me down. I rub the back of my neck try to relax and wish for Beloved to be here doing that. She comes when she wants to.

      A strange old town named Markleville is in California in alpine country at the bottom of several different passes old pioneers used. The brown, dry desert full of pale greenish-brown sagebrush and tiny little grasses, and an occasional pun tree stretches before me.

      On I go through Gardenerville and up to the Hot Springs. I see a forest service camp and say to myself that I'll come back and camp there soon. I drive about twelve more miles, climbing again into mountains. I pass the reservation, home to many Washoe people. I would like to go visit, but I am not invited. Smoke Man Dancing taught me much about native Amerinds.

      I am in alpine country now. The pines are short, squat pun trees. Thereare aspen and birch and willows and cottonwoods As I climb, the Carson River appears on my left. A few pine and firs are up on the higher levels. It is late afternoon, and I am in Markleville. It's warmed up, and I peel off some sweaters.

      There's not much here to look at, just some old buildings not all that well-kept. If you go into any public place, there are a lot of people. Iwonder where they come from. The bar on the corner is crowded. It appears as if they are all are natives of this place. Across the street is a store and cafe.

      The young woman running the store is rather beautiful. She is very tall, maybe over 6 feet by several inches, and in her jeans she looks like every woman dreams she will look in jeans. She is wearing a sleeveless sweat shirt, and her arms show that she's a hard worker. We talk a little.She tells me she moved here with her partner from San Francisco. Both women worked ten years and lived in poverty there to get the chance to live here in Markleville. She and her friend have a cabin up in the pines. They own no car but have motorcycles to ride into Carson or up to Tahoe. She says, "We like it right here most of the time. Lots of friends and no hassles. My partner can write all she wants and anything she wants, and since relaxing away from the city she is selling well."

      The tall girl points out one of her partners books. I'm impressed. She's a best selling author, and I would never dream she lived here. I buy a book.

      She goes on to say, "Here people let her and me alone. We are turning into really happy people finally." I tell her it is great to see young people live out their dreams, and I mean it.

      It is past noon, so I get a sandwich and a local travelogue. There is a story about the Sorenson Lodge just going up the valley pass toward Tahoe again. Before you come out into the valleys called Faith and Hope, the Lodge is there on the last slopes of the mountain going down to the Carson River.

      I take my time on the road because I'm having palpations again. I did have a cup of coffee on the porch of the grocery store, so maybe it's not fear. Could be the altitude, but down here it's only about 5000 feet. Still, I find I am sweating and shaking some. I want one of the tranquilizers I always carry but do not use when I drive.

      When I arrive there is a quaint lodge, all log and post buildings with awide porch covered with outdoor tables and benches. The architecture is a botched up copy of Swiss chalets. The main lodge is the owner's home, too, as well as the kitchen and the cafe. The entrance has a nice registration desk and a little gift shop with some books and magazines and a few toiletries. This and That. I buy a History of Alpine County published by the Chamber of Commerce and go to see about registering.

      The gal in Markleville had called and made a reservation for me. She said they would start to fill up about 3 pm when people are getting really to rest and relax. Like me. They put me in a little duplex log cabin. it looks like a little doll house with a porch and chairs out there. Over the door is assign and painting of a flower, Lupine. Oh, I think. Oh, I will sleep in a Lupine tonight.