Thoughts about…

The Final Stretch of the 2024 Tahoe Big Year

Having undertaken so many long-term goals over the years, you’d think that I’d be more mentally prepared when coming to the end (of each goal). But I always struggle. Usually I’m mentally wrecked by the time I get to that finish line because of exhaustion, boredom, or a lack of continued enjoyment for doing the thing. Sometimes it’s because I complete my goal too soon and then find myself stuck waiting for the clock to run out.

Mostly, though, I think it’s just because doing the same thing for so long can simply wear a person down. As much as I love routine, I’m not immune to the long-term effects of repetition, whether they be due to a physical act or strictly of the mind.

I also struggle when coming to the end of a goal because of overlap. Basically, I become torn between savoring the last phase of an experience and looking forward to moving on to the next. As a result, I wind up dealing with some version of analysis paralysis by constantly second guessing myself even when I do eventually choose to do one thing over another.

For example, during the second half of November there were a bunch of snowstorms that hit the Tahoe region. This caused some really great birds to hunker down at Lake Tahoe which enabled me to document them for my Tahoe Big Year (TBY). It also brought snow on which to cross-country ski. So I’ve been doing both, more or less, while waiting for my winter job to begin. However, I’m constantly thinking about one while doing the other and vice versa. And then there’s the countless other projects that I’m consciously avoiding so that I can focus on birding for these last few weeks of the year.

Ultimately, I’m just trying to keep my mind in check while I properly finish this TBY. There’s not much time left of it and, of course, there are a handful of us in the top five only separated by a couple of birds. I’d be more casual in my approach to ending the year if it was a blow-out or there were huge gaps in numbers between all of us. However, we’re just so close to one another in species count.

Now, I still maintain that I don’t really care where I end up in the standings. But I do care that I don’t just give up, walk away, or say good enough before the year is actually over. Realistically, I’d be grinding for the rest of this month even if I was ranked 38th, for example, and only a couple of birds away from reaching 37th place. I just don’t want to sell myself short when we’re so close to the end.

That would be the easy thing to do. That is, to stop worrying about birds and just go out and find good snow every day on which to cross-country ski while making more YouTube videos. This is something I’m really looking forward to doing again. If that were the case, I might even have enough time for everything else that I’ve put off this year. But this is going to be my last Tahoe Big Year for a long time, so I’m really just trying to put those thoughts on hold until January 1st.

Besides, there’s still the potential for some cool birds to show up that I want to find and photograph. That, and I have two more minor goals on my wish list at this point. Since I’m currently at 218 birds, I’m shooting for an even 220. Once I reach that, I’d like to find one more bird to achieve 221 species. That would put me at exactly 20 more birds than my 2021 total of 201. If I get to that place I’ll go for 225, and so on and so forth.

There’s a Japanese concept that we try to put into practice when training in Aikido. It’s called zanshin, and it’s translated as “remaining mind.” I’ve also heard it translated as “continuous mind” and “continuous flow.” In really basic terms, though, you could just define it as “follow through.”

In Aikido, zanshin has us holding our posture and remaining aware of our surroundings after throwing our partner, for example, as opposed to just checking out the moment we release them.

This is the same thing that we’ve all practiced when learning to swing a baseball bat, tennis racket, or golf club, or throwing a basketball into a hoop. We don’t stop our swing the moment the bat makes contact with the ball or go limp the moment we release the ball from our hands as we shoot a jumper. We hold that position or posture as if we were launching a wire-guided missile. We see the thing through to the end because it guarantees the best possible outcome.

That’s all I’m really trying to do at this point. To practice or embody zanshin by seeing this Tahoe Big Year through to the end to achieve the best possible outcome.

I saw five new birds in November putting me at 218 species so far this year. Those birds were a Bonaparte’s Gull, Tundra Swan, Cackling Goose, Ross’s Goose, and a Long-tailed Duck. The three last birds on that short list are considered to be fairly rare for Lake Tahoe. Myself and a handful of other TBYers saw the Cackling Goose and Ross’s Goose. However, I’m currently the only person who’s seen a Long-tailed Duck this year.

That Long-tailed Duck observation was totally random because I picked it up while it quickly flew by Kiva Beach on the morning of November 30th. I had just arrived at the beach after hiking from Taylor Creek when I saw a bird flying over the lake. I casually sighted in with my binoculars, then immediately swapped them for my camera once I recognized what I was looking at. I took a barrage of photos of the Long-tailed Duck but, unfortunately, my camera settings were still on low light/slow action settings so the images are mostly blurry (see below). But we do what we can with what we got, and I did get plenty of identifiable documentation of the bird!

Visit the official TBY website to see the current top 5 contenders.

Going hand-in-hand with photographing nature (birds, wildlife, plants, etc.) is my iNaturalist account where I upload my nature observations in order to contribute to citizen science. Each year iNaturalist generates a statistics page of the data users provide, so if you click on the image below you’ll be able to see mine.

If you don’t have an iNaturalist account, I encourage you to sign up. It’s basically like participating in a DIY naturalist education!

Keep in mind when looking at these stats that I’ve only uploaded a fraction of my 2024 observations. With these Tahoe Big Years, I’m gathering so many photos of so many species that I don’t usually have a chance to upload every nature observation. So I basically have a backlog of thousands of photos to eventually upload (like when I retire – haha!). This year, for example, I pretty much have been uploading observations related to the TBY, as well as some other species that I find particularly interesting. But, yes, this is only a portion of what I actually document.

That is one of the many things that I love about iNat. That is, each observation is its own thing (one species at one location at one point in time). So you don’t have to include everything you saw that day, for example, which is different from eBird which is checklist based. That means that you have to input every species and the total count/number of species you observed on a given birding excursion.

The second half of November was quite dramatic at Lake Tahoe. We had multiple snowstorms yielding snow in the range of a couple of inches at lake level to a couple of feet in the higher elevations.

There’s nothing quite like fresh snow and its accompanying storms to get me excited about xc skiing (and talking about xc skiing – haha!). Hence, the videos I produced last month.

Also related to the videos I made last month is the official notification that I received from YouTube (on 12/3/24) that my channel has now received a total of 1,000,000+ views since I started it. Pretty cool, although far from enough activity to enable me to retire – haha! But it is a fun milestone just the same.

In spite of technically having a YouTube channel since 2008, I didn’t start creating videos in earnest until 2018. It was slow going during the first two years as I was trying to figure out a process and to determine a focus for my channel.

The channel started to really take off during the winter of 2020/21 (largest spike on the graph), which happened to be the first winter after Covid. At that point, I basically went all in on winter content (cross-country skiing and snowshoeing videos).

Once I saw the potential of the YouTube channel, I started to slow down my output on Tahoe Trail Guide. This has always been disappointing to me because I love words and photos nearly as much as videos. So once this year’s Tahoe Big Year is officially over, I plan to begin writing more articles again for Tahoe Trail Guide!

Thanks for being a part of my life. Until next time…

-Jared Manninen

Tahoe Trail Guide is an online resource for hiking, backpacking, cross-country skiing, and snowshoeing in the Lake Tahoe region. In addition to trail data, I offer backcountry “how-to” articles and information about the local and natural history of Tahoe. Tahoe Swag is a collection of art and design products I create based on my love of the outdoors and appreciation for Lake Tahoe and the surrounding Sierra Nevada Mountains.

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