Experience a unique blend of art and the natural world during the eighth annual Trails and Vistas art hike on Sept. 17-18.

The hike, modeled on the theme of “Reflections and Rhythms,” takes place at Spooner Lake in Lake Tahoe Nevada State Park.

Expect to hear the beats of REMO Endorsed Drum Circle facilitator Norman Jones from the Rhythm Child Network, a group that helps children and adults connect with their inner rhythms through drumming. Also, new for Trails and Vistas are dancers from Marin-based Terpisicor D’Amour Dance and Lorna Danton, a visual artist from Reno.

Emmy-award winning Chris Spheeris, a musician and poet from Sedona will be returning to perform at Spooner Lake for this year’s art hike. Enjoy the fluid movements and strength exhibited by acrobats and dancers from San Francisco-based Capacitor, an interdisciplinary dance company obsessed with the mechanics of the human body and machines that propel the body through space. These performers are known for the expertise in rigging systems, wearable sculpture, and engineers of large-scale props. Appreciate the sculpture, movement and mythology created by dancer Lesley Ehrenfeld Chapman. Delight in the exquisite painting by Cathee vanRossem-St.Clair, famous for her magnificent egg art – one of eggs, The California Thrasher was created for the Whitehouse Christmas Tree and is now in the National Archives. Another Tahoe-Truckee resident, Emily Tessmer of Orenda Blu Music, will share sacred chants. Dancers from InnerRhythms Dance Theatre will spark your imagination.

Additional artists are Truckee-based artist Caree Bragg, local poet Kira Yannetta who recruited her brother, Benjamin Hall, a musician from Southern California to participate in this year’s event.

The list keeps going with an impressive group of creative minds and hearts including Angelika’s Healing Music, Angelique Benicio and Deborah Kelly. Attend one of the Saturday hikes and hear Reno Taiko Drummers led by Rieko Shimbo. As a young girl in Japan, Shimbo saw taiko performed at many festivals. Her formal training began with a professional company based in Tokyo. Today she has her own group in Reno with 15 students who practice weekly and perform throughout the year.

There will be a variety of specialty hikes including family hikes designed for walking with children at 2pm Sept. 17 and 10 and 10:15am on Sept. 18; leisure hikes suitable for anyone not acclimated to high elevation at 4pm Sept. 17 and noon and 3:30pm on Sept. 18; and adult-only meditative hikes will be available at 3:30pm Sept. 17 and 2:30pm Sept 18.

The art hike is a collaboration between artists and nonprofit organizations including the main sponsor, Trails and Vistas, and the Truckee Donner Land Trust, InnerRhythms Dance Theatre and the KidZone Children’s Museum.

For more information and ticket prices, go online.

The Truckee Public Art Commission is accepting applications for its juried autumn art exhibit.

This year’s theme is “Everyday Objects.”

Artists must be at least 18 years old.

The deadline to apply is Sept. 7 at 5pm.

Artwork will be displayed at the Truckee Donner Parks and Recreation Community Center from Oct. 4-Jan. 31.

More information and applications are online.

By Laurie Brazil

If you haven’t visited our jewel of Emerald Bay – Vikingsholm – this year or perhaps not at all, now is the time to take the one-mile hike down to the south end of Emerald Bay.

Earlier this summer, new and stately crossed dragon beams were installed along the roof ridges of the courtyard buildings at Vikingsholm in Emerald Bay State Park at Lake Tahoe. Originally carved when the building was constructed in the summer of 1929, the boards had considerably weathered and deteriorated over time.

“Decorations of this type were common among many ancient wood churches in Scandinavia and stem from an early superstition,” Helen Henry Smith writes in “Vikingsholm, Tahoe’s Hidden Castle”. “When Christianity was introduced in the 11th century, there appeared to be some doubt that it would be entirely effective. Therefore, dragon heads, similar to those found in heathen temples, were carved on the Christian churches to provide added protection against all evils.”

Vikingsholm

The original dragon beams were the product of a Scandinavian craftsman who was brought in from New York and was responsible for all of the exterior carvings that were done from wood that was hand hewn in Lake Tahoe.

California State Parks Foundation worked with restoration specialists Architectural Resources Group to have the fascia boards replicated by a wood craftsman from the Bay Area and provided the financial support for this important project at the castle.

Make sure your summer agenda includes a visit to one of the most unique and spectacular blends of architecture, natural beauty and craftsmanship that Lake Tahoe offers. The cascading falls that backdrop Vikingsholm are at their zenith and the roar can be heard along the trail and throughout the bay.

Fannette Island, in the middle of Emerald Bay, also boasts a tea house that was a feature added by Lora Josephine Knight when the property was acquired.

The parking for Emerald Bay State Park can be quite limited on weekends, so a weekday is preferable. The Nifty Fifty Trolley is a unique way to travel and stops at the parking lot to let guests off to make the walk down to the Bay.

Laurie Brazil lived and worked at Vikingsholm for several seasons alongside Helen Smith and the two are now life-long friends. Brazil later was a member of the California State Parks Foundation-Vlikingsholm Council and helped to raise the funds that have been instrumental in the restoration.

A well known Yosemite climber and speaker, three movies and a Native American storyteller will be featured this fall supporting the popular One Book, One Campus program at Sierra Nevada College.

The program that began in 2009 continues this year with the reading selection “Flight” by Native American author Sherman Alexie. The film series begins Aug. 30.

All programs are free.

Sierra Nevada College’s One Book, One Campus program was inspired by the popularity of book clubs and a growing number of college campuses adopting common reading programs. The idea of a common reading selection rests on a simple idea that reading the same book brings people together as a community by creating a common ground for discussion. For more information on the film screenings or on the Common Reading Program, contact Library Director Betts Markle at (775) 881.7511 or emarkle@sierranevada.edu.

The films are shown at Sierra Nevada College,TCES Room 139, 999 Tahoe Boulevard, Incline Village.

Sierra Nevada College Native American Film Series

Aug. 30: Ron Kauk presents “Return to Balance – A Climber’s Journey” from 7–9pm.

Sept. 13: “Naturally Native” from 7–9pm.

Sept. 20: “Miss Navajo” from 7-9pm.

Sept. 27: :Snowball Effect” from 7-9pm.

Roxanna Lopez, operations manager in the U.S. for Green Key Global, will give one of the main talks at the 2nd Annual West Coast Green Lodging Conference in South Lake Tahoe Aug. 21-24.

She will address the gathering of hotel owners, general managers and engineers on Aug. 22 at 3:30pm at Embassy Suites.

Lopez will present the nuts and bolts of third-party certification for the lodging industry, with a focus on how it serves the day-to-day operational needs of properties at various stages of their particular “green” journey.

Green Key Global, the leading green hotel certification program in the world, with more than 2,700 hotel members.

In addition to Lopez, the conference will feature presentations from representatives of Marriott International, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and W Hotels.

For more information about the conference or to register, call (775) 265.8815.

Mother Goose on the Loose Storytime is Thursdays at 11am on Sept. 8, 15, 22, 29; Oct. 6, 13, 20, 27; Nov. 3, 10, 17; Dec. 1 and 8.

A lap sit storytime for little ones upt to age 2.

Mother Goose on the Loose is an award-winning program that combines music, movement, visual literacy and language development to help children get ready to read.

Storytime is at the South Lake Tahoe branch library – 1000 Rufus Allen Blvd.

Sierra Nevada College’s Writers in the Woods 2011 features readings and workshops by a cast of luminary literati.

Maine’s Poet Laureate Baron Wormser will kick off the series with poetry reading Sept. 16, followed by a Saturday morning poetry workshop the next day.

Kim Wyatt, writer, publisher, founder of Bona Fide Books publishing, will talk about entrepreneurship and book publishing on Oct 14, followed by a workshop on how to submit work for publication on Sept. 15.

Chris Ware, award-winning graphic novelist, cartoonist and author of “Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth,” will talk about the graphic novel as a literary genre on Nov. 4, followed by a workshop focused on experimenting with this form on Nov. 5.

Author Suzanne Roberts joins Sierra Nevada College as the Writer in Residence for 2011 and will teach poetry and travel writing classes at SNC as part of the regular curriculum.

Workshops are open to the community for a $50 registration fee, and may be taken for credit or non-credit. The Friday night readings remain free and open to all.

By David Epstein, Sports Illustrated

Cross-country skiing around a wide, icy curve, Petra Majdič slid off the course during a warmup for last year’s Olympic women’s individual sprint at Whistler Olympic Park outside Vancouver. She fell 10 feet into a craggy creek bed, her chest hitting rocks. The impact snapped her ski poles and splintered the tip of one ski.

When volunteers rushed to her aid, she screamed at them to take her to the start of the qualifying heats, which began in 20 minutes. Her coach, Ivan Hudac, and her sports psychologist, Matej Tušak, told her she could attempt to ski, and if the pain was too great, she could drop out. And so she tried. Majdič completed the 1.4-kilometer course, finishing 19th of 30 qualifiers, before collapsing and screaming in pain. She still had three more rounds of races to go.

Majdič, a 31-year-old from Slovenia, had come into the one-day competition as the favorite. She was expected to win several medals in Vancouver. Four years earlier an equipment mishap—she used cold-weather skis on an unexpectedly warm day—had kept her from a medal in Turin. Now her Olympic dream would come down to how much pain she could tolerate over the next five hours.

After the qualifier, Majdič was taken to an on-site medical tent for an ultrasound. If her ribs were broken, she wouldn’t continue. The excruciating pain from snapped ribs can stop even the toughest athletes, and perhaps no sport puts more strain on the body’s core than cross-country skiing. If it was only pain, though, maybe Majdič could go. For the last two decades she had spent hour after hour trudging through snowy woods, her legs and lungs burning, forging a relationship with pain. “The beauteous things in life are born from pain,” she says. “For example, a child is born from great pain. In summer, in autumn, in winter, I struggle with pain, so my pain level is really [high].” In 2008, when her boyfriend of six years couldn’t understand her obsessive training any longer, she chose skiing, her first love, and that too hurt. Now, in Vancouver, she couldn’t give in to “just pain.” With the quarterfinal heat less than 90 minutes away, doctors didn’t have much time to assess her condition. On the ultrasound, nothing appeared to be broken. It’s just pain, the team doctor told her.

Majdič won her quarterfinal race, but afterward, ashen and hunched, she told Hudac she couldn’t go on. It felt, as Majdič later put it, “like when somebody would all the time give you a knife” in your chest.

“She had a crisis,” said Tušak. “We tested her, and she could not go five meters up a hill and turn around. She could not sit, so she was lying down, and when she stood up she was [hunched over]. But doctors told us nothing is broken, and I told Ivan, if nothing is broken, we go on. If we let her quit, she will be mad at us. This is her last chance to get a medal.”

So Majdič continued. For the semifinals, her coaches again told her just to try. She finished fourth out of five in her heat but, based on time, qualified for the six-woman final.

During the 20 minutes between the semifinal and final, the pain got still worse. Majdič could hear a gruesome click, click in her chest—her ribs moving. “That’s when I know it was something serious,” Majdič says. She couldn’t take an injection of painkiller, though, because it would numb the muscles she needed to race. Tušak talked to her about Kerri Strug, the U.S. gymnast famous for her gold-medal-clinching vault on an injured ankle at the 1996 Olympics, and about Majdič’s 22 years of sacrifice. He reminded her that her arms and legs were still working. He talked to her about the pain she was feeling. He convinced her that it was in her head.

“I had a great team—coach, doctor, a [ski] service team,” Majdič says. “You have to understand, these are people who are coming from the same [country] as I do. We were just always poor in the cross-country skiing world. Now for four years when I’m on top, we are showing the world, don’t joke with small nations because we can beat you!”

In the final Majdič started outside but pushed through and finished third, fending off Anna Olsson of Sweden for the bronze. Five hours of pain had ended in Slovenia’s first medal in cross-country skiing.

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Masters of song and storytelling Men of Worth will appear at the Tallac Historic Site’s Boathouse Theatre Aug. 18 at 7:30pm.

Ireland’s James Keigher and Donnie Macdonald of Scotland blend their voices in harmony and support their collection of songs with an exciting selection of instruments. Their playful approach to performance draws the audience into another world, one true to the Gaelic-Celtic music and stories. Their show is a unique combination of humor, intriguing tunes and soulful, heartfelt ballads.

Tickets are $18 for adults, $15 for children.

Go online for more information about the South Shore performance.

Lake Tahoe author Janet Smith will be at the Costco in Carson City from 11am-2pm Aug. 20 for a book signing of the anthology “Permanent Vacation: Twenty Writers on Work and Life in Our National Parks.”

The collection, published by Bona Fide Books of Meyers, features Smith’s piece “Pretty Enough,” a bittersweet account of coming of age in one of the world’s wonders, Yosemite Valley.

Smith’s piece details her experiences leaving home after high school for life among the granite in Yosemite National Park. “At 12, I fell in love with Yosemite the way other girls in the 1970s fell in love with Bobby Sherman or David Cassidy.” At age 18, she moved to the park in search of meaning, and found something altogether different.

The book also features essays from Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Yellowstone, Denali, and Grand Canyon National Park among others.

Copies of “Permanent Vacation” will be available at the Carson City Costco, located on 700 Old Clear Creek Road. “Permanent Vacation” is also available at online.

A website allows park workers and visitors to share their stories and learn more about the contributors and their current adventures.

Bona Fide Books is seeking essays about national parks east of the Mississippi for a second volume of “Permanent Vacation.” Submissions are open through Jan. 1. Go online for more information.