Lubbock, TX to Casa Grande, AZ to Los Angeles, CA to Monterey, CA to Rohnert Park, CA to Eureka, CA to Lincoln City, OR to Mt. Saint Helens to Portland, OR
July 5th~11th, 2008
This is the essay I submitted for the National Geographic Glimpse application due July 14th, 2008. Even though I was not accepted to the program I’m very satisfied with it. Hope everyone enjoys!
California. Known to many as the most liberal state in the U.S. The land of renewables, recycling and wind energy. And the land of the hybrid or fuel cell vehicle. The land of expensive and beautiful cars, houses, and stars. And to some the land of the strange and socially inept. However you look at it, the west coast is a land of wonder to those of us living outside of its bonds.
Over the course of just the past week I have had the opportunity to experience for the first time a minimal, generalized portion of the state of California and the west coast of the United States. The journey, while being somewhat overwhelming for a newcomer, has been truly thoroughly enlightening. I have traveled over twenty-five hundred miles by car of mostly scenic routes from northwest Texas to Portland, Oregon via California. The trip was completed in about six days which were spent sightseeing in a few key cities and along most of California’s Scenic Highway One with nights spent in various town and cities from small to huge along the route. (We favored Best Western it seems…)
For me, California has long been a land of my dreams. A place I always wanted to visit and even live in; a place where the mind feels liberated and the spirit free. From an age younger than made me capable of comprehending such a sudden action as moving to the opposite side of the country, I lived from day to day wanting to do just that. And for just that reason it can be seen why California existed as a fantastic dream land in my young mind.
Upon crossing the border from Arizona to California, without even experiencing any significant sights or indication that the place was indeed someplace new, my spirit soared and I became light at heart for whatever internal reason. In fact the same desert-like scenery rolled past for many more miles. The flat plains of Arizona had simply turned into rock-strewn, treeless rolling hills in SoCal. This scenery also led us through our first California sight: Joshua Tree National Park. This was so close to what I was already used to seeing in Arizona that I still now have trouble disassociating the two.
Eventually I had reached my destination for the night in one of America’s largest cities, as you may have expected, Los Angeles. This came just came just after driving through fields of huge wind turbines intended to power most of southern California in the future. In LA I stayed for the night after hanging with an old friend and checking out the sights to behold around part of downtown and Hollywood. As soon as I saw Los Angeles I was practically blown away and surprised most of all to find that it was built on top of a mountain range (as it turns out everything else in California is). I had expected a sea-side metropolis on at least as flat of land as New York City is. From there it was north along some country-side routes giving vast views of extensive valleys and high, rolling hills which left me speechless. And eventually along Scenic Highway One where I (and my camera) captured my first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean. The first time in my life. And I was just awe-struck. The highway winded in and out along steep mountainside cliffs that made me a bit nervous and sick. The sand down at the ocean’s edge was thick and dark in color when there weren’t just towering, monumental rock structures jutting up out of the water. Fog and mist hung low over the horizon and added to the picturesque and moving view.
The next night was in Monterey after being diverted through back-woods roads around wildfires that left a smoky smell in the air. Monterey and Santa Cruz both got us turned around but only to experience more different sights such as the colorful streets and the people and all of the bicycles and cycling, which greatly drew my fascinated attention. More scenic views took me to San Francisco where I ate at the Fisherman’s Wharf and took pictures while my father drove the car down Lombard Street’s steep winding corridor. Then I got my first view of the Golden Gate bridge, snapping plenty of photos along the way.
The next two days brought me through more scenic highways and past a number of redwoods, one of which we could even drive through. This, again, was quite the breathtaking experience. I felt as if I was standing in a forest in which I did not belong and only prehistoric creatures were free to roam. I kept a sharp eye on the far dark reaches of the woods just in case a Rex might be lurking around the corner of one of those massive giants waiting to eat me. Nonetheless it was also a captivating experience.
In the end I may not have known I left California and entered Oregon if not for the sign telling me so or the coastline becoming somewhat less scenic. (I guess the gas prices being lower factored into it too.) And at that note I realized something. Something that, sure, plenty of us already acknowledge. And certainly I knew well about it too having taken a number of courses focused on culture and globalization. You see, nature knows no boundaries. Just like the people of this world. And nature should be the best indicator that boundaries simply do not exist. The Saguaro cacti, though we found them centrally focused around Tucson, scatter even north of Phoenix and probably south deep into Mexico. The rocky desert hills continued from Arizona into California and the redwoods continue growing into Oregon. The mountain ranges flowed, though getting smaller, throughout California and the cliffs stayed sheer even along Oregon’s coast. And by just the middle of this long trip I realize I have experienced so much variety in one week that I am simply speechless in awe at almost everything. It is hard to fathom that here I am in Portland, yet another new place for me, writing this and I am simply so overwhelmed that the best way I can show my fascination and contentment is to be quietly awestruck by the beauty and variety of this place.
I have forgotten by this point in my life what I thought was so great about California for so many years that drew me to wanting to be here. What ever it may have been, I think it certainly couldn’t match up in proportional scale to what I have found. From rocky deserts with cacti to wind farm fields, from crowded highways and confusing city streets to scenic cliffs and mountain ranges with cities perched atop, and from cultured coastal towns through deep fertile valleys to towering prehistoric-sized trees somewhere along the way I was made aware of the experience of a lifetime that was years overdue.
Writing from Portland, Oregon | July 15, 2008
