INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. – As Jerry Linenger looked out from his porthole window on the space station Mir, his eyes were searching for that familiar, turquoise landmark tucked inside the snow-clad peaks of the Sierra Nevadas below.
“[Lake Tahoe] is a very special place on the planet,” Linenger, retired U.S. Navy flight surgeon and former astronaut, told the Tribune. “I think people that live up here realize that. It’s hard to miss it.”
Linenger, now an Incline Village resident, first became acquainted with the Lake Tahoe region during a formative summer between his junior and senior years through a National Science Foundation scholarship where he studied Environmental Science at the Foresta Institute…