I love mountains and I love lakes. Last week, I got to spend a few days at a lake that was higher in the mountains than any lake I’d ever seen. Lake Tahoe is 6,000 feet in elevation. The mountains surrounding it rise another 3,000 feet and are still capped with snow in July.

The trees around Lake Tahoe are different from the ones I’m used to. Their branches start high up on their trunks so that you can see a long way into the woods between them. You can actually see the forest for the trees.

I am a very lucky guy. I try to never lose sight of that fact for long. A man I work with owns a cabin near Lake Tahoe and invited me to use it for a week.

It was incredibly quiet there. Almost deafening in its silence. And dark enough to see an incredible number of stars at night. It was so relaxing that I was able to spend some time training my sketching eye through the windows of the cabin and out to the trees, mountains, and lakes.