The old stomping grounds

Just about any journey along the California coast will pass through or near the places I once called home. Today I’m in Orange County where I lived in Costa Mesa, Corona del Mar, Irvine and Huntington Beach. There have been many changes since I first arrived here in 1976, fresh out of college, and when I left in 1995 (with a few years in Silicon Valley and San Francisco inserted in there). Not all the changes have been for the better, but it’s still very familiar.

This is where I grew into adulthood and into something more closely resembling my authentic self. Although I haven’t lived here in 30 years I still feel like a Californian. I never felt like a North Carolinian even though I resided there eighteen years.

But “Californian” feels less a part of my identity since I adopted the wandering life eleven years ago. Now I’m mostly just a human. Or some sort of living creature. I think.

So, anyway, today I spent a couple of hours walking in the Upper Newport Bay Nature Preserve. (Yay! Something that hasn’t been developed!) I chuckled when the view from the parking lot included the building where I worked at my first real post-college job, with an office and a desk and a paid parking spot. The top executive’s offices faced the ocean. The best we lesser beings had was a view of a gated community/golf course, if we had a window at all. Now I get a view of that office tower and get to say, “Neener neener neener, you folks are in there working and I’m out strolling in nature.”