I stopped to catch my breath, looking behind me to justify my effort. The trail yields little sympathy as it rolls (although the descent feels sharp) down a grassy hill, but the view behind it gave me a greater reason to pause.
From this spot, about a mile into the California Trail’s Truckee Route near Verdi, I could see the beginnings of the Truckee Meadows framed by the northern flank of the Carson Range, Crystal Peak and the hills of Peavine Mountain. Utter quiet surrounded me, in a meadow of green skirted with Jeffrey pines and mule ears. I smiled, rolling my eyes at the woman I had been an hour before, trapped in a lie that it was too hot, with a sun too relentless to explore near home.
This is a common lie I tell myself, one that feels more and more true each time I sit on the black leather seats of my Subaru while running errands in the summer. We live in the high desert, right? It’s a place that would be nearly inhospitable from July to September without a working air conditioner (or at least a good swamp cooler) and endless streams of cold water in our kitchens. But unlike other places—like Fresno, Calif., the hometown I’ve happily abandoned—this slice of Northern Nevada provides us with a varied environment with a surprising amount of water (most years) that is easy to access, plus a generous nightly wind to cool us off.
I’m not recommending summiting Rattlesnake Mountain at 2:30 p.m. in the middle of July, unless you’re more lizard than primate. However, I am advocating for local, summertime trail adventures…