When I was little I would often say that I wanted to grow up to live in California.
I am from the rural hill towns of Massachusetts, a place where houses were (and still are) heated by wood stoves, and where people chop and stack their own cordwood in the Fall so they can get through the truly unfunny winters. A place where snow tires are “studded”, and everyone knows how to steer into a skid on black ice. A place where cable television, internet access and cell phone reception are still considered spotty luxuries at best.
Before my twenties, I had never been to California. I had never even been to New York. Except for a few fluke trips abroad garnered by grandparent generosity (and pity, I suspect), the most exotic place I ever went was Boston.
Still, in my heart, I knew California was going to be it for me. I just didn’t know why. If pressed, I would tell people that I wanted to be in California when the big earthquake shook it free from the rest of the country, so that then I would be living on an island, floating free on the Pacific, away from all you people.
(Ironically, I am now of course terrified of earthquakes and frequently subject myself to torturous nightmares about being trapped in my fourth floor apartment when the big one comes. Ah well, seems I’ve lost the blind courage – and the fantastic imagination – of childhood.)
One of the first things I noticed when I finally moved to California was the curious abundance of maintained, accessible hiking trails crisscrossing the Headlands and running rampant up the coast. I’m sure that hiking trails exist in rural Massachusetts, but I had never been on one, nor had I been subjected to any kind of outdoor culture (outside of skiing, brr, yuck) that would have enlightened me to the fact that such a thing as hiking trails existed.
I embraced this access to the great outdoors, and since I’ve lived in the Bay Area, I’ve become a master of navigation of my beloved Mt.Tamalpais, have discovered backpacking, and can even take you on an urban hike through San Francisco parks and along coastal bluffs. Hoo-Koo-E-Koo, Matt Davis, Railroad Grade, Cataract, the Dipsea…. these are all places I’ve spent a lot of contemplative time over the years. I’ve spent nights at the West Point Inn (accessible only by state-maintained hiking trails), camped at Steep Ravine, backpacked into Castle Rock State Park, and taken moonlight walks to Tennessee Valley Beach. My favorite departed cat, Milla, is even buried (surreptitiously) on a high point in Mill Valley, in a resting place with an eternal sweeping view of Marin, San Francisco Bay and Muir Woods.
Now, our freak governor (and I mean not necessarily that he’s a freak—although I suspect he is—but more that it’s a freak that he’s governor at all) is making the move to close the majority of our state parks within the next month, citing “fiscal crisis”.
There’s not enough room in this blog to get into the myriad of reasons why this is an asinine idea that’s going to backfire and create more problems than it could possibly solve, not to mention that it’s going to strip this state of the valuable tourism that is it’s only chance of survival in this day and age.
But I’m not much of a political ranter, so on an entirely personal note, the closing of the state parks in California is, to me, a tragedy of emotional proportions. It’s akin to taking away our art, our spirituality, and in some small way, our raison d’être. Not to be too dramatic.
Without the parks, it’s a going to be a lot less California around here.
