Across the street from our home on Mountain Meadow Drive lay a world that seemed as old as the West itself.<\/p>\n
Every summer, the meadow filled with cattle.<\/p>\n
I was told they belonged to William “Bill” Van Dyke Johnson, whose family had ranched these mountains for generations. Folks around Meyers spoke of the Johnsons with the kind of respect reserved for families whose names had become part of the land itself. Johnson Pass, they said, carried the family name, and along with his sister, Marjorie Springmeyer, and his brother, Knox Johnson, Bill’s family owned vast stretches of ranchland throughout the region.<\/p>\n
At six years old, I didn’t understand land ownership or old pioneer families.<\/p>\n
I understood cows.<\/p>\n
And to a little boy, they were enormous.<\/p>\n
Standing beside the fence, they looked as big as dinosaurs. Their slow eyes watched every move I made while their tails lazily swatted flies. They seemed gentle enough as long as I moved slowly and spoke softly. Sometimes one would wander over, lower its great head, and breathe warm air through wet nostrils as if deciding whether I was worth investigating.<\/p>\n
I wasn’t afraid…<\/p>\n
Until one of them suddenly jumped.<\/p>\n
A startled cow is a shocking thing when you’re only four feet tall. Thousands of pounds of muscle can spring sideways with surprising speed. The ground seemed to shake beneath their hooves, and every instinct in my little body told me to find safety.<\/p>\n
So I did.<\/p>\n
I learned to stay close to the fence.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t cowardice.<\/p>\n
It was respect.<\/p>\n
Thirty-five years later, life has a funny way of bringing old stories full circle.<\/p>\n
By then I was grown, and Bill Johnson was operating Bill’s Apples in Apple Hill. One day I found myself standing face-to-face with the very man whose cattle had seemed larger than life when I was a boy. He was every bit the gentleman people said he was, and I couldn’t help but smile at the thought that neither of us probably realized we’d met decades earlier\u2014he on horseback somewhere beyond the meadow, and me pressed safely against a fence, watching his cattle with wide-eyed amazement.<\/p>\n
The meadow held more than cattle.<\/p>\n
It held mysteries.<\/p>\n
In 1975, long before anyone imagined it would become Washoe Meadows State Park, it was simply our backyard. Miles of open meadow stretched beneath the shadow of Mount Tallac. Beaver ponds shimmered in the afternoon sun. The Upper Truckee River wandered wherever it pleased, twisting through grasses that reached to my waist.<\/p>\n
There were no admission gates.<\/p>\n
No interpretive signs.<\/p>\n
No parking lots.<\/p>\n
Just wilderness.<\/p>\n
It was there that my friend Charlie and I disappeared for entire days.<\/p>\n
Charlie’s family had recently traded Southern California for the Sierra. They had sold Hodack’s House of Interiors in Huntington Beach and decided to retire to Meyers. While others dreamed of beaches and palm trees, they chose towering pines, winter snow, and mountain air.<\/p>\n
Looking back, I think they made the better bargain.<\/p>\n
Charlie and I would disappear into those meadows convinced we were explorers. Every trail led somewhere unknown. Every stand of lodgepole pines might conceal an old cabin, an abandoned mine, or a forgotten campsite left behind by pioneers. We carried little more than our imaginations, and somehow that was enough.<\/p>\n
Those afternoons seemed endless.<\/p>\n
The meadow wasn’t just a place.<\/p>\n
It was our frontier.<\/p>\n
Watching Bonanza<\/em> on Sunday nights had convinced me the Old West had disappeared a hundred years before.<\/p>\n Then Monday morning would arrive, and I’d walk across the street.<\/p>\n There were cattle grazing beneath snow-capped mountains, hawks circling overhead, and ranchers carrying on traditions older than California itself.<\/p>\n It turned out the Ponderosa hadn’t vanished after all.<\/p>\n I’d been living next door to it all along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Across the street from our home on Mountain Meadow Drive lay a world that seemed as old as<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10613,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[43],"tags":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Bill-Johnson.jpg",750,500,false],"thumbnail":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Bill-Johnson-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Bill-Johnson-600x400.jpg",600,400,true],"medium_large":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Bill-Johnson.jpg",640,427,false],"large":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Bill-Johnson.jpg",640,427,false],"1536x1536":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Bill-Johnson.jpg",750,500,false],"2048x2048":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Bill-Johnson.jpg",750,500,false],"darknews-slider-full":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Bill-Johnson.jpg",750,500,false],"darknews-featured":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Bill-Johnson.jpg",750,500,false],"darknews-medium":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Bill-Johnson-720x500.jpg",720,500,true],"darknews-medium-square":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Bill-Johnson-350x350.jpg",350,350,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"News MoLo","author_link":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/author\/admin\/"},"category_info":"Alarcon<\/a>","tag_info":"Alarcon","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10610"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10610"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10612,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10610\/revisions\/10612"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}