Leaving the L.A. Basin, I drove across a maze of people and pavement that boggled my mind. After four days in a California idyll with my son in Venice Beach a block from the ocean, I was encountering the famed L.A. freeway system – the flip-side of the postcard. With no slow lane for my […]
Landscapes
Strawberries, Broccoli and Wine
La Tortue and I spent several days along the central coast of California, where we visited family and friends. This reconnection with the oak savannah of my childhood has been splendid and serene. After Pismo Beach, I discovered Guadalupe, a broad valley along the coast that is ringed all around by mountain ranges that hold […]
Standing at Pismo Beach
How to describe the light that erupts along the central coast of California? From the oak-studded ranch land around Pozo, where my mother grew up in the shadows of the Los Padres National Forest, I climbed over the Cuesta Grade through the Santa Lucia mountain range and dropped down to the Pacific shore. There, I […]
At the end of the road
La Tortue huffed and strained her way up Redwood Road on the outskirts of Napa, California, right to the end of the road. Here, I found my old friend and fellow-writer Robin Lewis, who lives with his wife Lynne on an old family farm amidst the birds, deer, coyotes and wild foxes. Redwood Creek flows […]
Pockets of Agates
The El Nino storms hit Klamath, California hard on Thursday. La Tortue trembled in the force of the wind. Rain pounded on the roof, waking me in the dead of the night. Miraculously, I lay warm and dry. (Thank goodness I am getting too old for tent camping.) For the next several days, I watched […]
Redwood Majesty
I parked La Tortue beside the pristine Smith River in Jedediah Smith State Park last night, a preserve of old and second-growth redwood trees. Today, I walked in a grove where fire had swept through hundreds of years ago; many of the oldest trees were scarred by the flames, but continued to adapt and even […]