The summit at Heavenly Resort in Lake Tahoe is 10,067 feet up. Standing there atop the Sierra Nevada on a crisp, clear winter day, you’d swear you were gazing across not only the lake but the entirety of the Great Basin and all of Utah, glimpsing the Rockies in the fuzzy distance. Face west, and your eyes take in the Central Valley, hop over the Coast Ranges, and spy the Pacific as a thin blue ribbon on the horizon. Tiny snowcapped peaks lap at your ankles, and you confront a soaring vastness in every direction. It’s with great humility that you recognize your place in nature, in history; you recognize that, throughout time, countless others likely have stood in this very spot and that countless more will do so after you’re gone.•
This article appears in Issue 30 of Alta Journal.
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Blaise Zerega is Alta Journal's editorial director. His journalism has appeared in Conde Nast Portfolio (deputy editor and part of founding team), WIRED (managing editor), the New Yorker, Forbes, and other publications. Additionally, he was the editor of Red Herring magazine, once the bible of Silicon Valley. Throughout his career, he has helped lead teams small and large to numerous honors, including multiple National Magazine Awards. He attended the United States Military Academy and New York University and received a Michener Fellowship for fiction from the Texas Center for Writers.
