Lake Tahoe is believed to be between 2-3 million years old and is considered by scientists to be among the 20 most ancient lakes on earth. Even the Washoe Tribe whose presence archeologists trace back at least two thousand years, are relative newcomers to this lake situated over a mile high in the Sierras.

Which is why it can be said that the “Saga of Lake Tahoe,” the title of two epic volumes of early photos and anecdotes by local historian E.B. Scott, are mere primers for a much longer story still to be written about the deep blue jewel the Washoe called “big water.”

One morning this past week I made up some of the ground Sean and I missed hiking on by instead of a “walkabout,” doing a “boat-about.” Shin and I boarded a vintage wooden boat owned by Ed Scott Jr., son of the legendary Tahoe author and boatsman. We stayed close to shore in Scott’s 39-foot Chris-Craft, "The Saga,” to make up for the steps Sean and I couldn’t take past the private West Shore estates once owned by the likes of the Kaiser and Dollar families, or of modern-day moguls like Hewlett and Zuckerberg.

Ed’s restored “woodie” regularly wins the annual wooden boat show called “Lake Tahoe Concours D’Elegance” at Obexer’s Boat Co. in Homewood. It’s “old Tahoe” in every sense of the word, even if all the regalia and pride in the boat’s lacquered mahogany surface represents a mere moment in time, a drop in the basin’s ancient history.

Ed Scott Sr. gathered the early stories of “settled” Lake Tahoe from his boat shop on the old Tahoe Tavern peer. Local officials have credited the senior Scott as “the man who saved Lake Tahoe’s history.” Just about every Tahoe cabin or condo houses his coffee table books of old photos and creative captions embellishing the tales, tall and otherwise, that he took 19 years to assemble.

Scott’s depictions of photos in the “Saga” are in and of themselves classics. Like: “Ice Age Rubble” (describing Rubicon Point’s cliffs), describing the trees at Sugar Pine Point as “priests raising their arms in benediction,” or detailing a certain view of famous “balancing rock” in D.L. Bliss State Park as something that “appears to resemble a startled, bun-coffered spinster more than the sour-faced gremlin so often identified.”

Without Sean on this day of our Tahoe trek, I turn to another former Capitol reporter from Carson City, who had some fairly eloquent things to say about his own boating adventures on the lake. Mark Twain wrote this after one of his early maritime soirees on Tahoe:

“In the early morning one watches the silent battle of dawn and darkness on the eaters of Tahoe with a placid interest but when the shadows hulk and one by one the hidden beauties of the shore unfold themselves in the full splendor of noon; when the smooth surface is belted like a rainbow with the broad bars of blue and green and white…bold promontories, grand sweeps of rugged scenery topped with bald glimmering peaks , all magnificently pictured in the polished mirror of the lake.”

Reflections indeed abound at Tahoe. The younger Ed Scott inherited from his father a love of boats and the lake. Memories of the lake that comprised his childhood come easily to mind. The classic wooden boats are enjoying a kind of revival and are a chapter of Tahoe’s history worth preserving, according to Ed. “To the families that had these old wooden boats, it was a way of life and a part of their second nature. Boating was in our blood. We would go by boat to get the mail or to visit friends.”

Asked about what this legacy means to him, Ed Scott Jr. says; “People like me have been given them to watch over for awhile. It’s our responsibility to take care and preserve these boats and hopefully pass them on someday. We are a part of Tahoe. If we take care of the lake, then it will be here for a long time.”

It’s true that what we do in our lifetimes will be a page added to the saga of Lake Tahoe. Whether it be the preservation of wooden boats, or the lake’s legendary clarity that supports them — we each have a chapter still to write.

RGJ columnist Pat Hickey was a member of the Nevada Legislature from 1996 to 2016.