Why I Love California

It is jaw-droppingly gorgeous here. I'm not talking about the beautiful weather (though it has been balmy and clear almost everyday since we arrived), but more the amazing scenery around every turn. Simple jaunts down the freeway afford staggering views of San Francisco Bay. Crossing over the Bay Bridge is astonishing every single time as the city of San Francisco comes into view with the Golden Gate Bridge peeping through the fog in the distance. Max, Henry, and I went to a regional park in the hills above Oakland called Redwood Park, and I could have sworn that I was in some remote national park in the Sierra mountains. This place was gorgeous! There were towering redwood trees that were hundreds of years old along a rocky wandering creek. You could hike for miles in that place without seeing another human being. I don't mean to sound snobbish, but there's something about landscapes in the West that is inherently more grandiose than what you find out East. Virginia, for example, has history galore, rolling green hills, some nice rivers and even some modest mountains. In California, however, everything is on a different scale. Mountains are taller, distances are greater, coastlines are more rugged and more scenic. Scott will scoff at this because "place" doesn't matter much to him, but I feel very tied to the land here. I was in Virginia for ten years and as much as I built a happy life there, I never felt completely at home. California is my home, and I feel so lucky to be able to raise my boys here beside the ocean and beneath the redwood trees...