California, mythical land of dreams and gold: I love you.
I love your golden hills.
I love your cold blue Pacific, lapping at your side.
I love your fog, shrouding you in mystery.
I love your vineyards, your oaks, your sequoias.
I even love your rolling earth, sounding first like distant thunder and then shaking and quaking every fiber of my being.
But most of all, I love your spirit– that infectious and inexplicable can-do-ness that saturates every pore of one’s being once one is within your fertile soil.
The kind of can-do-ness that can push people to build homes in the wilderness.
The kind of can-do-ness that can push people to go to the shelter without protest and know they can trust.
The kind of can-do-ness that will rebuild and help heal wounds just like it has after every disaster that has hit you before, beautiful girl.
I love that while you burn –as you are meant to do, being low desert and chaparral forest and sweet mirage– you still hold on to the essence of who you are.
You are Zen sarcasm personified– twisting the knife with a smile and a kiss. Dealing the medicine with a spoonful of organic sugar. Finding the remedy within your blood.
Your people love you.
We love you.
And from my bittersweet exile in this little happy swamp, I always have a piece of you moving with your waves deep within me.
_______
Hey SoCal readers, are you guys okay?
A Daily Dose of Zen Sarcasm! 
I really like your ode to our Golden State – which right now is also very red and orange and smoky gray.
I’m in the eastern Ventura/northern LA County area, which is about the only area where things are improving much. I’ll have a post about it all going up on my blog later. My mother-in-law is in San Diego County, and we’re watching closely since it’s SO bad there, but she’s been OK so far.
before i left cali yesterday, we could see the irvine fire burning from my backyard. the sky was gray and dark and that’s not because it was supposed to be a cloudy day. the sky was gray because of all of the smoke. even from inside my house, you could smell the smoke. the smoke was in the air everywhere.
Sigh.
This was lovely. You made me homesick.
There isn’t a day that goes by for me here in D.C. where I don’t ask myself, “What was I thinking leaving San Francisco?”
My goal is to get back there and when I do, I’m never leaving again. Ever.
Thank you for this. Hope your friends in SoCal are okay.
“All the leaves are brown (All the leaves are brooooown),
and the sky is gray (and the sky is graaaaaay!)
I’ve been for a walk (I’ve been for a waaaa-aaalk)
On winter’s day… I’d be safe and(I’d be safe and waaa-aaarm), if I was in L.A.
California (Cal-i-fornia Dreamin’) on such a winter’s dayyyyyyyyy!