Tag Archives: california

Jan 15 2012
8 Comments
Fiction, Humorous, Two minute read

Let’s Pulp These Redwoods

As I was in Muir Woods yesterday, gazing up at redwood trees that were decades old, trees that oozed wisdom and earthiness and nature, I thought to myself, “These would make a dump-load of paper.” The pile would be huge! A gigantic pile of paper, a majestic pile of all different kinds of paper: magazine grade paper, cardstock, envelopes, post-its, a mosaic of various types and cuts of paper.

I wonder how many dumpsters all that paper would fill. If you took all the trees in Muir Woods and made it into paper (toilet paper, nose tissue, cardboard), I bet it would take up an entire landfill. So much waste…it would be awesome!

Just one tree would make reams and reams of paper. They’re so tall! Those towering majestic redwoods are so slender and shapely I just want to shove them into a pulper and let the magic happen.

If we made Muir Woods into paper and then took that trash to the moon and littered it everywhere, it would probably cover a large portion of the moon’s surface, or at least fill that place that’s called something like the Sea of Loneliness and we could rename it the Sea of Redwood Trash instead.

And if we took all the redwood paper and dumped it into the ocean, I can’t even imagine how much wildlife we would kill. But it would definitely be an insane amount.

Nature is awesome.

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Jan 14 2012
4 Comments
Anecdotes, One minute read, Travelling

Another Okie Heading West

As I stood on top of one of the Twin Peaks and looked out over the bright city of San Francisco and into the bay beyond with its rust colored Golden Gate Bridge and the lumpy green mountains beyond that, and looked behind me and saw the setting sun and its reflection in the water so it looked like two suns, and glanced down and saw my lengthening shadow on the earth, and felt the coolness coming from the trees, and considered all the combinations of colors of green and blue and brown and bright that lay before me, I thought to myself that there is no other city I have found in this earth that has such a high concentration of everything I love. Creativity, nature, color, coffee, books, floral dresses, and sidewalks all combined and laid out on a grid set between hills on a peninsula in the bay.

And then I thought that I would like to live in California, if it would have me, and especially if it would find me a place to live and pay my bills. But those might have to be personal journeys. I would make the effort, though. It would be worth it to live here.

Here I come, just another liberal arts graduate with a job in retail.

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Jan 12 2012
6 Comments
Anecdotes, Two minute read

Walking on Feet in San Francisco

I walked almost 8.7 nautical miles (10 miles) today in my Sperry’s and skinny jeans (no prairie dress yet). I wore a black jacket and sometimes it was a little too warm in the sun, but I liked having it for when I was in the shade. I tied it around my waist when I wasn’t using it. As the day wore on I talked louder and more often to myself, to the point where it was nearly a constant conversation, but I feel like you can do that here in San Francisco, where people can be who they want to be. I want to be a wildly gesturing person on the street wearing a puffy black jacket tied around her waist.

San Francisco is easily one of the most beautiful and livable cities that I have ever been too. I’ve been to cities in Morocco or Colorado, for example, that are beautiful to visit and quaint to look at but would likely be quite suffocating to live in, like beautiful quaint hands slowly closing around my throat. But San Francisco’s hands are not suffocating. They wear funky, locally made jewelry and make funny gestures. I like San Francisco’s hands.

When I am in a new city, I love exploring it on foot, without a map or an agenda, and that’s what I did today. I had made a halfhearted plan to go see stuff but then ended up wandering my day away, which I believe is always a good decision. There’s nothing I like more than the feeling of complete freedom, being in a city in the world with no agenda and the ability to follow any whim I have, like to poke around the campus of University of San Francisco, or to hunt down a church spire I saw gleaming far away, or to turn onto a random street because the trees look really fluffy or because the sunlight  is hitting it just right at the golden hour in the late afternoon when everything is beautiful and I have to follow the beauty.

Walking in San Francisco is unlike walking in other cities. I would be walking on a street lined by those beautiful houses that remind me of whimsically decorated gingerbread men and all of the sudden in the distance, the street ended in a crest, over which I could see nothing. Did the world end? Was there a breathtaking view of azure bay water? Yet another park? The urge to climb these hills was impossible to fight, and climb I did, and sure enough, I would be rewarded with a lookout into the distance, either towards more hills covered in trees with bright buildings clustered around the bases or the bay with its islands and other bodies of land reaching into it. I didn’t want to leave the crests.

In San Francisco flowers bloom in the winter. I like it here.

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Jan 11 2012
8 Comments
Travelling, Two minute read

California Prairie Dress Wearin’

It’s all come to this. The progression of time has brought me to the point where the plane ticket I bought to go to San Francisco is ready to be redeemed and I will sit next to someone hopefully not smelly for a few hours to LA and then someone equally pleasant smelling on the way to San Francisco, the land where dreams come true. Specifically, my dreams. This will be the land where  my dreams come true.

I’m going there for a week to visit some friends and do some future hunting, possibly accosting people on the street, grabbing their collars and saying “GIVE ME A JOB!” And then following them as they try to run away. I’ll be wearing a dress and boots so it’ll be difficult. But I digress.

I’ve never been to the West Coast, and most of my thoughts about it are informed by Hollywood and my conservative grandparents who are worried about the moral decay of America. I imagine it’s somewhere in between heathens roaming the street looking for souls to sway and a land of infinite possibility.  Perhaps the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Oh and I forgot about Full House. Most of what I know about San Francisco in particular comes from watching Full House.

There’s gold in them hills, or so they say, and now it’s my turn to go and get me some. If I don’t come back, it’s because I found my fortune out there. If I do, it’s because my fortune is not yet ripe for the plucking and I need money from my parents.

I even got a new dress for the journey. It was 5 dollars at goodwill. The brand is “California Girls.” It’s floor length and has shoulder pads and a high collar and a fetching print. I can’t wait to blend in on the sidewalks, just a regular prairie girl minglin’ with them city folk.

The next week or so of posts will likely describe a steep descent into culture shock and loss of moral bearings, followed by unlikely growths of hope and self awareness, ending with a reconfirmation of personal identity with added perspective on the entirety of reality. I hope I can deliver.

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