Letters: An ode to California

The picture that paints a thousand words doesn’t do California justice. California’s majesty requires a 3D mural that stretches between El Kapitan and Half Dome. Its geographic diversity is a metaphor for the diversity of its people.

California’s Dream is one of opportunity while refusing to give suckers an even break. The freeway to success is off ramped with numerous, unforgiving wrecks. Hard work and hard luck go hand in hand. Success, once achieved, demands continued innovation. And then “they paved paradise, put up a parking lot.”

California is a sexy, reddish orange sunset sinking through distant waves of a lavender Pacific Ocean, the magical February atmospheric flames of the Horsetail Fall at Yosemite, and a bleary-eyed tequila sunrise as two deserts conjoin at Joshua Tree.

California is the timeless freedom of being in a convertible cruising the Pacific Coast Highway from LA around “Dead Man’s Curve” to the Oregon border, the frustrations of exhaust pipe imprisonment in traffic jams on the 405, and the fresh air of the two lane, forested curves of the Golden Chain Highway in California gold country. California is Route 66 and El Camino Real.

California is a beautiful All American melting pot of musical, tasty and colorful immigrant culture. Seventy languages. “La Vida Loca!” Sushi. Taco Tuesday. Curry. It’s a state of mind. And sometimes your mind doesn’t matter, especially when “the men on the chessboard get up and tell you where to go.”

California is where when Sinatra sings “That’s Life” it means something different to some of the richest unemployed people on the planet and thousands of their homeless neighbors. California is alternate realities, alternate lifestyles, and alternate energies. California is 3,000-year-old giant sequoia trees, 352 named mountain ranges, and 1,650 miles of Pacific shoreline.

California is where real people living day-to-day quietly overrule political correctness. Vegetarians coexist with my bacon cheeseburger. Californians with political and religious differences break bread together. “Includes Indians, too.”

California is a societal roundabout. No longer a stranger in a strange land, I feel at home. Emotionally speaking, “You can check out any time you like but you can never leave.” The Golden State conjures unrequited longings from white-flight expatriates whose written angst papers birdcages in the Heart of California.

California is the one-eye-open, head-pounding hangover following a centuries old all-nighter at an Ojai dive bar: the chest crushing explosion of mountain avalanches, the silent, creeping tule fog, untamed floods overflowing long dead Gold Rush era stream beds, mudslides pushing Malibu homes into the Pacific Ocean, year-round wildfires, World Series Bay Area earthquakes, the man-made exacerbation of historically recurring droughts, and the foreseeable but ignored climate change erosion of shorelines.

California’s agriculture leads the nation. Our economy is the fourth largest in the world. The Los Angeles port opens the country to 40 percent of America’s imports. “I Love LA!”

I don’t wear rose-colored glasses. I don’t “shade” our state’s obvious imperfections without suggested solutions. And I don’t cut and run. California is worth improving from within.

I love California!

“And Alderaan’s not far away.”

— Chuck Wieland,

Madera