California

Never the same. Endless days of sun, nights of blood-orange sunsets. Some mornings new and rosy, some muted. Days of drought, wildfires, parched and shifting earth. Dark days of fog, rain and sliding hillsides. Crowded, curlicue freeways, deep and coyote-filled canyons. Disappearing cottages. Rising prices, mansions.

Dreams as big as the ocean, christened by the waves. Friends as new and unfettered as you can find. Or as veiled and sequestered as you prefer to remain. (Chances your children will throw off the robes.)

Men and women as beautiful as Hollywood moguls can invent. Men and women as plain as the prairies and rusty, dusty towns they left in a hurry. Families of the earth who raise chickens and vegetables in their backyard and sell eggs and turnips at the farmer’s market.

People of many tongues and colors. They go to work every day, driving taxis, painting toenails, hauling trash, sending their sons and daughters to school so they can go to work every day carrying a computer. Hi-tech, bio-tech, big pharma, little geeks.

Leading edge, cutting edge, falling off the edge, as did Columbus to discover New Worlds. New lives, new identities.

Wherever you go, there you are is no longer true. The earth can shake and rotate swallowing you into oblivion. While you sleep, it coughs you out and there you are in the morning, glowing new as a baby.

Ready to invent vaccines, Google, cures for cancer and disappearing coral reefs. Vote in a leader who is still dreaming, but has slid down moonbeams to earth, managing to offend few.

In one day, travel from sea lavender and sand, fall into meadows and forests, drink deeply of the desert air. Celebrate the return of the condor, the largest bird in North America, flying over this wildest land with a swoop and salute.