At the beginning of 2024, queer community leaders in my touristy mountain town of Truckee set a goal to host the town’s first-ever Pride celebration, which included 27 free events throughout the region in efforts to empower the town’s queer community.

In Tahoe-Truckee, with its plethora of mountains and lakes and trails, you can recreate all day long, but if the weather is bad and you are looking for diverse film experiences, it can be hard to find.

Lake Tahoe attracts outdoor lovers from all over the world. Catering to these visitors is a nearly invisible corps of service workers, many of them women from Latin America who work in minimum wage jobs as cooks, servers, and housekeepers. Though they live and work in one of the most beautiful places in the world, few ever have the opportunity to venture outside.

Nevada County has a rich food culture with distinctive culinary roots. The mountains, foothills, lakes, and rivers create a region that provides a bounty of fresh ingredients.

The GVNC and Truckee Cultural Districts are bursting with literary energy, and the chemical reaction of poetics is already taking shape.

Across the country, organizations such as the Smithsonian Institution are creating initiatives to educate on the significance of the night sky and to recover night skies above many towns and cities from light pollution. The movement to promote this perspective of the dark skies has reached Nevada County.