As I sit by the fire writing this letter, South Lake is a picture perfect winter wonderland — trees are drooping heavy with snow, roads are narrow and lined with snow banks, and all the eaves are lined with icicles. And there’s another ten feet of snow forecasted through the weekend.
I need not remind you this is one of my favorite things.
Ten days ago, this was a typical summer scene and the ski resorts were all closed — nothing but mountains of dirt. It hadn’t even been cold enough to make snow. December 2021 will likely be the latest opening date for the ski resorts and the largest snowfall in recorded history — the driest and wettest simultaneously.
This multiplicity of existence is an idea I’ve long been comfortable with even as it tests my sanity. Abundance and scarcity coexist. Good times are also bad times. This was Kyle’s Fall 2021. And while it broke me in many ways, I also feel as if I’ve broken free.
When Iast left off, the Caldor fire was still burning and most of the build team for the new house were still evacuated, with only three weeks left in Tahoe’s excavation season to finish the foundation. Oh. And then a historic atmospheric river hit California.
Impressively this all worked out! We were able to get a grading exemption from TRPA, and the team was able to pour the remaining foundation and stem walls, finish waterproofing, insulate, lay the radiant down, and pour the slabs.
This was a huge win! It means we can start framing this winter. You know, as long as we keep snow-blowing the basement.
While we were down in Palm Springs evacuating from the fire, we had taken Alia in for some x-rays to see about a recurring, but occasional limp she had developed over the past few months. The vet told us she had effectively tore her ACL (it’s a little more complicated, dogs don’t have ACLs) and would eventually need TPLO surgery on both her knees. This is apparently something very common in medium/large sized dogs, and especially in ones like Alia — “electric” as the vet described her.
We returned back to Tahoe and started looking into the surgery. She was still very much the same dog, bounding around and chasing everything that moved in the forest. But within a few days, she quickly escalated from refusing to use one leg to not being able to use either of her back legs at all.
I had to carry her everywhere and we couldn’t get her to pee/poop for over 48 hours.
Needless to say, this was pretty tragic. And made much worse with having to deal with modern vets. I’m not sure if they were just too busy, or if they didn’t believe she could go downhill so fast, but it was incredibly difficult to get any of them to see our dog — let alone schedule a surgery. Most were talking to us about scheduling a consult 4-6 weeks out and surgery another month or two from then.
Eventually after a small breakdown and some crying on the phone, I was able to get my regular vet here in Tahoe to look at her and prescribe her some strong enough meds that she finally started peeing and pooping, albeit with a lot of struggle.
Doggo Struggling - YouTube
In the end, we were able to schedule the surgery down in Palm Springs about a month after she collapsed. It wasn’t as fast as I’d hoped, but it was months sooner than anywhere in Tahoe would take her. This was good in a lot of ways — Palm Springs is flat (no stairs), there are no squirrels to chase, and it’s a lot more comfortable to sit outside for hours trying to get my dog to poop.
We’re now 8 weeks past her surgery, and she is doing great! I can’t pretend to understand the surgery. They tell us they modify the geometry of her knee joint so that she doesn’t need her CCL — but none of that makes much sense to this non-veterinarian. The end result is she is walking great, has a few extra pieces of metal in her legs, and seems to be on a path to full squirrel-chasing recovery.
To make sure we could give her the best recovery possible, we stayed down in Palm Springs for almost the entirety of this Fall. We had to cancel some travel plans and rearrange our lives a bit, but in the end I’m happy we made the choice. And Palm Springs isn’t exactly a bad place to be stuck.
It was good to enjoy the sunshine and explore Joshua Tree and Palm Springs with Jessica’s aunt & mom. Oh, and we got laser eyes! Yeah. At the same time.
I’ve had so many of my friends tell me that lasik was one of the best life upgrades they’ve ever done, and I kind of agree. It’s sort of amazing to just… always see everything clearly — even though my prescription was fairly mild (-1.5 / -1.25). And no more contacts snowboarding! The whole process was super easy and quick. The worst part was not being able to use the pool or hot tub for a month.
That was a few weeks before I lost my mind.
Look, it’s a weird thing being a Kyle.
I think the best phrase for how I was feeling was trapped in paradise. I was in a beautiful house, with my beautiful wife, lounging poolside staring up at the peak of San Jacinto while my dog roasted in the sun nearby. And still, I felt trapped.
One thing about being a Kyle is that you are often so responsible that you feel you must suffer when others suffer, halt your life when others halt theirs, and otherwise take on the responsibility of other people’s problems. And so while my lifestyle allows me incredible freedom, I often find myself self-restricting that freedom. One effect of that was that as of November 2021, it had been more than two years since I really had any alone time. Instead of taking time for myself, I’d spend my extra time and visit my parents, be there for a friend in need, or pick up the administrative overhead that others won’t take on. These aren’t bad things! I like these qualities in myself on the whole. But I also need my alone time. And not the “mom needs an hour for a bath” type of alone time — I need days of alone time without responsibilities. Not that often. But more often than every two years.
So, I hopped on a plane for the first time since the pandemic started and flew home to Tahoe for a week.
Lounging poolside in the endless summer of Palm Springs is probably a lot of people’s idea of paradise, but my heart will forever belong to the mountains. And Fall is almost definitely my favorite time to be in the Sierras.
It felt incredibly good to get back on my bike (which I hadn’t ridden since the fires) and pedal until my lungs said no again. It felt good to check in on my projects that have rooted me so deeply into Tahoe — I hadn’t even seen the house I was building!
And, of course, finally make it back out to Leaping Daisy after the fire.
There isn’t much more to say that hasn’t already been said. But, it was good to see it myself and complete the parenthesis that had been sitting open in my head since August.
On my way back to Palm Springs, I took the long route — I loaded up the 4Runner with the bikes, and spent a couple of days on the Central Coast visiting old friends and savoring the beauty that is California in the Fall.
The whole trip was very good for my soul. And at the same time it kinda pissed me off. Because nothing has been stopping me from taking time for myself like this except my own self. I’ve spent so much of my life being the only pillar of support for everyone around me, I forget that for the first time in my life I have my own pillar.
P.S. Did you know HashiCorp recently IPO’d and is now a publicly traded company worth over $15 billion!? Jess (and several of my other friends!) was an integral part of building that company, and it’s great to see their hard work rewarded.
So while the world definitely is ending, life is also very good!
I’m going to work on unapologetically doing the things I love and aggressively pursuing the things that bring me joy. Sometimes that is going to mean being in service to others, but other times it just means doing things because I think they’re going to make me smile, and often that means not doing other things that would make me sad or frustrated because someone else thinks it’s important.
What changes does that mean for me? Honestly, not that many. It’s not like I’ve put my life on a path I don’t want to be on. It’s a pretty great one! But it does maybe mean I need to feel less guilt for doing things I’m excited about doing, even if someone else is having a bad day, even if they aren’t the “correct” way of approaching the world (there is no correct way to approach the world).
And the thing I need to remember about embracing the things I’m excited about doing is that feeling builds upon itself. It’s why I finally found some inspiration to redesign my personal site, and actually publish a couple of articles. This is something I used to love doing! But I somehow got wrapped up that it needed to be… important? Part of a larger strategy? I don’t really know.
There’s a lot to be excited about for the upcoming year — and quite a few things to be sad about too. And they won’t tie into one beautiful story arc of betrayal, redemption, and growth. They’ll happen in confluence with each other, everything all at once.
For now I’ve got a couple more days in the mountains to enjoy the snow before I head back to the desert for a proper mid-century Christmas.
2021 has been a hell of a 2020 and I wish everyone the best for the next 2020 in the new year.
Kyle