Armchair travel

Last minute trips are fun, but sometimes I like the anticipation of a trip in the making. As I scour the internet looking for possibilities, my imagination expands.

Over the course of an hour, I’m on a riverbank, in the old growth forest, on a mountain. I’m sipping wine in Amador County, on a cable car in San Francisco, cruising up Highway 1 toward Bodega Bay. The choices tumble in and I consider them carefully, thinking of season and distance.

There’s the pure deep blue of Tahoe’s Emerald Bay, a carpet of spring blooms at Daffodil Hill, and -- always, always -- the constant tug toward the Pacific. The surfeit of choices overwhelms and calms me.

This is the land of Twain, Steinbeck and Muir. But it isn't. This is a place of tremendous and rapid change. Physical and cultural earthquakes are always at work here, remaking California for each generation. It doesn’t matter how it shakes out.

Nature doesn’t stand still for an instant. Preserve it? Hah. It’s on the move, regardless of efforts to lock it into place. All we can do it step back and watch. I’m stunned anew at its beauty.

I arrive at the end of the hour with a plan. I map it. Check the weather. Make a reservation.

South by southwest we’ll go.