I write as someone who has never visited California yet has long been fascinated by its scenery through the literature of John Steinbeck and the poetry of Robinson Jeffers. It took me years to discover Joan Didion’s California, with its unmistakable voice—the nostalgia of a girl for a frontier that finds its voice in a cry for a John Wayne—in the most evocative literary style. A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon a late one-act play by Tennessee Williams, Small Craft Warnings. It differs greatly from Pynchon’s California and his infinite Americana, which he constructs and deconstructs as if writing only for himself. Williams’s play is a collage of static character sketches: lost souls who gather in a California seaside bar to drink, carouse, search for love, and flounder eloquently in the avant-garde of suffering. There is no plot and little dynamism beyond the language, at times beautifully deployed. All of these writers have shown me a California that Vineyard and One Battle After Another also seem to seek. They remind us that literature is less about answers than about the worlds it opens—a California that is chaotic, improbable, and profoundly human. We inhabit it and risk destroying it with our capacity for being human: lost, suffering, desperate, and searching. As Williams said, “The thing you mustn’t lose in life is the quality of surprise.”

Grew up near Eureka. In fact, played bball against the hated rival logger’s in the Gym in the article! Great memories. Eureka High School had this player named Joe who could ball! I also saw Ziggy Marley play a concert in that gym with very low visibility (the gym was “smokey” shall I say?!). I haven’t lived in Humboldt for decades but its ‘mana’ still echoes in my soul. Surfed Big Flats a decade ago (who knew that was in my backyard all those years!). I still go back when can and I often make the opinion to locals here in Hawaii that Humboldt is just as beautiful as Hawaii, just in a different way. They generally give me the understandable “sure it does” response. But if you’ve ever seen King’s range from the ocean, spent a summer day in Southern Humboldt, gone on a forest jog, gone to a river swimming hole (high rock anyone?!), tooled around Arcata square, lived between super conservatives and uber hippies and everyone seems to coexist, then you will appreciate Humboldt. To be fair, most places have their beauty if one looks in the right spots and with the right mental perspective. And I shouldn’t ignore that there challenges to living up there behind the redwood curtain. Feel so lucky to have had formative years in that part of majestic California.