Wading through under-water estimates while Northern partisans raise Caen

In writing about our recent trip to Lake Tahoe I supposed I was merely writing an amiable travelogue that could offend no one.

It isn’t that easy to offend no one.

“I was quite sorry,” wrote Caroline Dunn of Thousand Oaks, “to hear that you did not enjoy your weekend at Lake Tahoe. . . . Lake Tahoe sits in one of the most beautiful areas in the world. . . .”

I don’t see how Ms. Dunn could have got that idea. We had a wonderful time.

I suspect that she read only one of the three columns I wrote, the one in which I expressed my disenchantment with casino life. (I’m sure nothing I said about the casinos will deter anyone who likes gambling from going to them.)

As for missing the lake’s natural beauty, I believe I described its natural beauty with what I would call unaccustomed ardor.

However, in describing a west coast shore cafe I wrote: “It was in the open air among pines and redwoods. . . .”

At least two readers have written to inform me that there are no redwood trees at Lake Tahoe. What I saw was probably a cedar.

It was a tall, thick tree with rough red bark. “There’s a redwood tree,” I said to my wife.

She didn’t correct me. So my error, as many often are, was her fault.

I also said that when the skipper of the Tahoe Queen excursion boat told us there were small, white freshwater whales in the lake I didn’t believe him. But later, when he shouted that three whales were following us, I started for the stern to see. It was a hoax.

But Carl A. Marotzke of Riviera writes to say that there are small white-and-gray freshwater whales called bullugus. “Minnesota Zoological Gardens has two of them in a big tank with a glass bottom and you walk underneath and they swim overhead.”

I don’t find bullugus in my dictionary, but beluga is described as “a large white dolphin of northern seas.”

Several mathematicians, amateur and professional, have written to challenge the statement of the skipper that the water in Lake Tahoe would cover the states of California and Nevada to a depth of eight feet, and of our ski-lift guide that it would cover California only to a depth of four feet, roughly.

James R. Pratley of the U.S. Forest Service, retired, calculates that the lake’s water could cover the two states only to an average depth of 1.2 feet.

“Of course,” he adds, “this average depth would be somewhat less, perhaps well under one foot, when we consider sloping side walls, together with all of the junk that people have conveniently lost, dropped and dumped into this jewel by misuse and by land development within the basin.”

Ted L. Farrell, using his sixth-grade arithmetic, calculates that the water would cover California to a depth of 11.93 inches or both states to a depth of seven inches.

Glenn R. Tanner calculates 18 inches for both states or 2 feet, 6 inches for California alone.

Oh, well, I didn’t believe those figures anyway.

The strangest complaint I received was from two men, writing independently of one another, who both accused me of having something I should describe as “a Southern California mentality” toward nature and society.

“I was disappointed,” writes Henry L. Scharff of Thousand Oaks, “that a world traveler like yourself had never been to Lake Tahoe. Take comfort, though, you are not unique among Southern Californians, most of whom have an appalling lack of knowledge about the state they live in. They become so involved in drinking in the pleasures of their sun-filled world that they have no interest outside of it. . . .”

Alan Titus makes the same complaint, but he personalizes it with a comparison between me and Herb Caen, the San Francisco Chronicle columnist.

“I grew up in San Francisco, and Herb Caen often wrote about the lake. The contrast between the content of your two columns is striking, and the differences reveal much about Angelenos and San Franciscans.

“Caen brings a consciousness of the natural world to his readers, and he helps them to see their place in this world. . . . His columns about the lake are written from the perspective that any one individual is just a speck in the history of this natural world, and that the worthwhile experience in visiting the lake is in becoming conscious of one’s small place in this world. . . .

“Angelenos do not share this attitude. . . . They are not educated of it and it is not a part of their social consciousness. Consequently, Angelenos are more likely to do things detrimental to the natural world. Angelenos do not see nature as an order greater than themselves and in which they should have only a very small role. . . . San Franciscans in contrast want to preserve, to fit into the scheme in order not to destroy it. . . .”

I have always known that Herb Caen and I hold different views of our respective cities; but I never suspected that Herb saw himself as a mere speck in the natural order of things. I always thought of him as a vain and self-centered man, in a rather agreeable way, like me.

But I am skeptical of Titus’ general thesis, that Northern Californians love and preserve nature, while Southern Californians desecrate it.

I think that’s about as true as the idea that Lake Tahoe holds enough water to cover California and Nevada to a depth of eight feet, and that small, white freshwater whales live in it.

I’ll also throw in that redwood tree.