My love letter to California
After living for most of my life in the Bay Area, I have made the difficult (that’s and understatement) decision to move to the Northeast, in light of the ongoing and deepening climate threat of living with fire. This is my love letter to the land we call California.
Dear land, dear jagged mountains and soup bowl of deserts, dear fog shrouded coastline and California bay scent:
Thank you for growing me up. Thank you redwoods for being the first trees I gazed into with two day old eyes. Thank you San Francisco for catching me at 20, lost and looking for a true teacher. Thank you Death Valley for reminding me that inflammation is inhospitable. Thank you tides for enveloping the blood of my unborn ones and delighting the ones who made it all the way through. Thank you countless mountains for your hard lessons in body and heart. Your curves and wild ridges and even wilder coastlines have inspired me to continually widen my lens. You have grown me up like no other. You have emerged in me and through me and woven me into the fabric of belonging. I know I belong with you.
But you are nebulous, wild, always changing. You have been many things before, and there is so much more you have yet to become. I have left you, mirroring your transformation with my own wide movement. You are a powerful land demanding all animals heed your attention as you burn. Move, you said. Change with me, you said. My heart breaks to leave my home, my biggest teacher, my land, my love. I’m not leaving you, but I am leaving. I love you, but I am leaving because I love you. I leave to stretch my running roots to find water, to not pull another drop out of your creeks for myself, knowing your depletion. The bear who passed through Sonoma County recently, where bears have always been but never are, she heard you too. I follow her lead now. I make room for her return. It is my great privilege to do so, but also a responsibility I feel in having heard you say go.
Humanity has criss-crossed your skin with highways and neighborhood grids and row after row of grapes and yet you remain wild in your oaks and slopes. So tenacious, so full of growth, despite exhaustion. I love you golden land. I love you mountains of fog. I love you bodies of brackish water. You bring me to my knees with your ferocious beauty. My land. Can I claim you as you have me? Can I take you with me? Aren’t I made out of you? Aren’t you me? Dear wild oak strewn land of the salmon and bear and hobo and hummingbird, are you sure I must go? I know. You’ve been clear. Time for you to transform, time for me to give space.
You are not just California, but the rich fabric of soil and memory that breathes life into my bone marrow. And if this is the case, I take you with me everywhere. I will find you under every rock noticed, every plant discovered, and every curve acknowledged of your great breathing body. I gather my rootlets and imagine them walking east, but my taproot remains forever with you, dear land of my birth, my heart, my love.