The mountains had a way of teaching lessons that didn’t come from schoolbooks.<\/p>\n
Some came from fathers swinging axes in the forest.<\/p>\n
Others came from girls.<\/p>\n
The year before I learned about stacking cords of pine, I discovered there were mysteries in life that even the Sierra couldn’t explain.<\/p>\n
We were living at Tahoe Sierra then, and I met my very first girlfriend. We were just kids, too young to know much about the world, but old enough to think we knew everything. Our kingdom was the broad sandbars carved by the Upper Truckee River. We’d wander for hours, following deer trails through the willows, skipping stones across the shallows, and imagining ourselves as explorers discovering places no one else had ever seen.<\/p>\n
The river was our playground, and the mountains our parents.<\/p>\n
It was just after the Summer of Love. None of that meant much to me at the time. The grown-ups talked about hippies and flower children as though they were creatures from another planet. I was more interested in catching lizards and building forts.<\/p>\n
One afternoon, while the river drifted lazily past us, my young sweetheart decided it was time I learned about the facts of life.<\/p>\n
She explained everything with the confidence that only a child can possess.<\/p>\n
I listened carefully, absorbing every word as though she were revealing one of the great secrets of the universe.<\/p>\n
When she finished, I remember looking at her with complete amazement.<\/p>\n
“How do you know all that?”<\/p>\n
Without missing a beat, she shrugged.<\/p>\n
“I watched my older sister and her boyfriend.”<\/p>\n
That answer seemed perfectly reasonable to her.<\/p>\n
To me, it only created a hundred new questions.<\/p>\n
Growing up, television had painted a very different picture of the world. Every Sunday evening we’d tune in Bonanza<\/em>. Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe rode the range, solved problems with honesty and grit, and somehow always managed to be home for supper.<\/p>\n I never remembered seeing anyone sit the Cartwright boys down for that<\/em> conversation.<\/p>\n Of course, as I got older, I started noticing something else.<\/p>\n Old Ben Cartwright had buried one wife after another before the series even began. Three wives, each the mother of one of his sons. Then along came a parade of ladies who seemed to capture Ben’s attention for an episode or two before riding off into the sunset.<\/p>\n For a man who spent so much time giving fatherly advice, Ben sure had an eventful romantic history.<\/p>\n Maybe that explained why those conversations never made it onto television.<\/p>\n Some lessons were left for the rivers, the forests, and curious little girls who thought they had all the answers.<\/p>\n Looking back now, I smile at the innocence of it all.<\/p>\n There was no scandal. No awkwardness. Just two children trying to make sense of a grown-up world that neither of us truly understood.<\/p>\n The mountains have always had a way of letting children grow up a little at a time.<\/p>\n And somehow, they always managed to do it before your parents realized it was happening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The mountains had a way of teaching lessons that didn’t come from schoolbooks. Some came from fathers swinging<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10618,"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\/ScreenHunter-6033.jpg",267,407,false],"thumbnail":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ScreenHunter-6033-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ScreenHunter-6033.jpg",267,407,false],"medium_large":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ScreenHunter-6033.jpg",267,407,false],"large":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ScreenHunter-6033.jpg",267,407,false],"1536x1536":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ScreenHunter-6033.jpg",267,407,false],"2048x2048":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ScreenHunter-6033.jpg",267,407,false],"darknews-slider-full":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ScreenHunter-6033.jpg",267,407,false],"darknews-featured":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ScreenHunter-6033.jpg",267,407,false],"darknews-medium":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ScreenHunter-6033.jpg",267,407,false],"darknews-medium-square":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ScreenHunter-6033-267x350.jpg",267,350,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\/10617"}],"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=10617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10619,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10617\/revisions\/10619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}