A User’s Guide to Northern California, from a Midwest Gal
“Mom, don’t say gal.”
We watched “Inside Out” (2015) again recently. It’s one of my favorite Pixar films, not least because it’s basically an animated Leslie Knope inside a cool little girl’s brain. This time, I noticed all of the ways the family in the film is like mine. They’re also moving from some M-state in the middle of the country to the Pacific ocean for some important techy job for the husband. They also have to sleep on the floor for a week while waiting for their moving company to arrive with their furniture, and they also have a dead rat in their new house. They have all kinds of emotions to process about leaving their friends, the snow, and the home they’ve always known. The only difference is that they complain about broccoli on the pizza out here and we’re dirty hippies, so we like it.
I’ve been a little reluctant to share too much about what it’s like out here, because, well, because up until this minute, it’s been winter time, and almost everyone I know is back East in the snowy cold misery. I feel like a jack-ass being like, “Hey-o, it’s sunny again here and I saw another fifteen types of flowers blooming on my walk today! What shade of gray is it there today? A nice taupe or more of a steel?”
But I’ve been reading Mark Twain lately, and he wrote a LOT about his observations of places he lived and visited on his travels, and since I want to be him when I grow up; clever, anti-racist, wearer of dramatic white mustache; I’m gonna start writing about what I see.
First and foremost, as evidenced by the broccoli, Northern California is all about nature and not so much about the people. “Our father who art in nature,” says Steinbeck, about Monterey, CA, in “Cannery Row.”
It really feels like we people are just lucky enough to borrow some time here. The roads wind up and down mountains wherever they’ll be least damaging to the mountain, it seems, and they don’t give a single organic shit if you and your car full of other humans plummet right off the edge. Speaking of edges, when you get to the edge of the state of California, there’s this ocean, see. It’s very long and deep and full of large animals and waves that will eat you. To get to the ocean, you just kind of pull up to the edge of the state and park, get out, and go try not to die. There are no guardrails or park rangers telling you how to behave, you just either go carefully or you die and your body decomposes to make more nature. California is fine either way. More humans will come. They always do.
If you wish to take a break from the glorious, extraordinary, and terrifying ocean, you can hike through the mountains, where there are…smaller mountains on top of the bigger mountains. You’re always going up, basically. There are also mountain lions and rattlesnakes, all kinds of brilliant flowers in shapes and colors I’ve never before witnessed, hummingbirds EVERYWHERE. Citrus fruit hangs on carefully manicured trees all over the neighborhoods, groomed and raised by gardeners. Any time after seven p.m. is “fruit-lootin’ time,” according to the two short thieves who live in my home.
The financial cost to live here is obscene. It seems like they could keep building and building and never stop building and more people would show up to find a way to pay to rent or buy…but there are so many stretches of earth untouched, protected. There are hugely dense cities, a lot of them, but then just nothingness in between. So many sanctuaries, parks, preserves, keeping nature safe from us. For the staggering population of humans, there are even more spaces of NOT humans. I understand the southern part of the state isn’t like this. I’ll leave it where it is, for now.
I’ve been here for six months and I’m surprised every day by something that seems exotic to me. Perhaps it’s the palm tree next to the evergreen tree next to the deciduous tree, or the fact that my kids are the only ones in their classes who only know how to speak one language (for shame!). This place is astounding. I have so much to learn, and am eager to do it.
For those coming to visit, my advice is always, 1) Don’t forget your Dramamine, these mountain roads are doozies, 2) The city is freezing cold, always. Pack a parka, even in August. 3) Come ready to heal. Something about the sun and the mountains and the ocean and the air does a number on the soul. Don’t leave it at home.
