BY JOELLEN COLLINS
I am briefly in Southern California, staying in the Pacific Palisades en route to visit my family in San Francisco, a winter indulgence. Driving to Montecito proved to be a mixed experience.
I have been spoiled by driving in Idaho. Except for the occasional frustrations of contending with snow, watching out for elk, or observing speed limits on Highway 75, I find that being a driver here is relatively easy and safe. However, heading out to the 101 freeway from the 10 (known as the San Diego Freeway) was a bit of a challenge, even though I was in a solid rental car, as opposed to the Yugo I rented some 15 years ago as a budget-minded woman. I truly felt then that I could very easily be enclosed in tinfoil rather than steel.
I learned how to drive on the Hollywood freeway and am usually undaunted by most forays on highways. However, it also rained on and off, and the traffic was its usual L.A. mad conglomeration of speeders, lane-changers and rude encounters.
On the way home I chose the Pacific Coast Highway exit at Oxnard, chose Beach Boys music, and enjoyed remembering the decades I spent on beaches. I still crave the smell and feel of the ocean.
However, the biggest shock for me as a survivor of a couple of earthquakes and the loss of a home in a brushfire when I lived in Southern California was driving by the huge boulders and still rushing waters below the blackened hills of Montecito. I used to fancy wanting to retire to Carpinteria or Santa Barbara, or anywhere near the beach in Ventura County, but life gave me the gorgeous mountains and friendly people of Idaho instead.
I planned to visit a rather distant cousin, a friend from high school in Burbank, and a couple who lived near me after my husband and I rebuilt our home of ashes in the Serra Retreat area near Malibu Canyon.
I was unable to finally contact my cousin and feared bad news. My other visits were rich in anecdote and affection, but both of these families had faced near-misses in the devastating fires and floods of recent history. Seeing truck-sized boulders resting in barren fields was painful, and I couldn’t abandon thoughts about the fright and suffering of this community and also Paradise, in Northern California, where many of those families who tried to flee Paradise died in their burning cars.
My visit has reinforced gratitude for having been able, long ago, to grab my napping toddler and escape only 15 minutes before our first home imploded on Serra Road.
I am also truly grateful that I have family and friends, even in this tentative existence, to love (and even drive to see in L.A.), but I am also gifted with the beauty of life that I explore even amidst sadness, decay and tumult, in the lovely Wood River Valley, where I can fully experience peace and serenity during this full, sometimes tragic but always challenging life.