The Great American Outdoors

and it is great.  Of course, I can mostly speak to California but even just considering California the outdoors is simply spectacular.  We have it all: the ocean, the desert, the lakes and rolling hills, the mountain peaks and foothills, the plains, the green and browns – everything from rough and unforgiving to gentle and lovely.

The central Pacific Coast after sunset. My pic.

There is nothing like a late summer day in the Sierra hiking, well maybe a spring day spend by the Pacific ocean, or a summer day boating on Lake Tahoe, or a winter day skiing or another spring day rock climbing in the high desert.  For me I feel that I am truly in California and in some basic sense home when I smell the Sierra, that mixture of fragrant trees and dust warmed by the sun, when I get out of the car and smell the fresh, clean air, hear the humming and chirping of birds and insects and know that I could encounter a bear.  And then I start hiking up the mountain to some little lake, nestled between the peaks of the Sierra Nevada.  This, for me, is California as it should be, was meant to be.

Europe has the Alps – and they are splendid – no but…

… but the Sierra for whatever reason is different.  Maybe because when I started hiking in the Sierra I did it because I wanted to, not because my parents made me  (as in the Alps).  Maybe because the sky is bigger.  I don’t know.  But I do know that I will miss the Sierra probably more than anything else, more than San Francisco – dream of tourists but a hard and expensive place to live in – more than LA – juggernaut of a city that I never liked.

But then there is the Pacific with its wild force and huge expanse that makes me feel almost as small as the night sky.  Just thinking about it – if I take a boat and continue straight on the next firm land I’ll encounter is Japan, the Philippines, Australia.  Awesome.  I’ll miss you, too, Pacific.