That was the wondrous moment when we glimpsed a pathway curving toward a storybook red cabin. By twilight, the scene had the dreamy aura of childhood imagination, the home of Hansel and Gretel, Goldilocks, the Three Bears.The cabin’s front porch was just big enough for two chairs and a romantic interlude. From there one could admire the coming of twilight, stars, a rising beacon moon. One could sit in silence, content, on an evening just like this, watching the forest blur into a gray-green scrim, feeling the air cool, hearing the mosquitoes sing, following the bats as they soared and swooped. Then, too soon, as if the meadow were an operatic stage, night’s curtain descended, transforming all that beauty before us into vague memory.We exhaled with envy for whoever lived there now. This was a retreat so simple it was grand. What Walden was for Thoreau, I imagined, Tahoe could be for Tan. Being there made me want to wax poetic. “Just two miles from Squaw,” Lou said. “Not a bad place to park your ski gear.”As it turned out, the cabin was for sale.
