This past November, I went on a solo road trip throughout the desert in Southern California. I camped most nights, and since it was winter and got dark early, I had lots of time to contemplate the desert at night. One of those nights I stayed at a near-deserted campground in Mojave National Preserve, where I met Craig and Bonny.
Right after I finished grad school, I worked on a research project that studied how New Orleans was recovering from Hurricane Katrina. Though I spent most of the summer working from my home in San Francisco, I did get to spent two weeks that August in New Orleans, enough time to do some exploring and get a sort of sense for the city.
When I was twenty three, I moved into a post-1906 earthquake building in the Cow Hollow neighborhood in San Francisco. The flat was a funny mixture of old and not-so-old, as old rental buildings tend to be. While the built-in cabinets in the living room had been covered in 1970’s-era faux wood paneling, an unfortunate consequence of a misguided attempt at “modernizing,” no one had ever bothered to improve upon the insulation in the walls. […]
California in winter is a strange mix of endless rain and fog with bright, piercing cold days when the light is crisp and crystalline. After the storms right before the holidays, we’ve been given a jeweled handful of these sunny days, and they’ve interjected some optimistic energy into my footsteps, a harbinger of a bright and clear year to come.
Imbibe Journal 