Hometown: Davis, CA

A few weeks ago I flew from Tennessee to Reno on my way to South Lake Tahoe. When I left the airport, heading towards the shuttle bus, I looked around at the desert foothills and I felt so close to home, but not quite there. After a short bus ride we crested the mountains that surround the East side of Lake Tahoe and I got a full view across the lake and into California. My eyes immediately tracked to Monument Peak and I had this intense feeling of being home. The trees, the granite, the hot dry summer air. Admittedly, for me, most of NorCal feels like home. From Lighthouse Avenue in Monterey to the state line in S. Lake Tahoe, from the shores of Big Sur to the Trinity Alps just south of the Oregon border.

It is a strange thing for me that my hometown and “home” are now different places. I grew up in Davis, CA (Most of you who read this blog know the place well) and until a few weeks ago my parents had lived there, still in the house I grew up in. They now live in Washington.

For my entire life, until this point, I have referred to Davis as both my hometown and “home.” Home not only because I grew up there, but Kristina and I met there and we lived there for most of our married lives. Now, I am in a bit of quandary. Davis still feels like “home”, but with my parents up North and, for the next few weeks at least, us in Nashville, Davis has been relegated to “hometown.”

Identification

Perhaps for some people where they grew up is not such a point of identification. At business school one of the first questions asked is “where are you from?” It follows closely behind “what was your undergraduate major?” (When you graduate they list your name, degree and hometown.) From your answer a great deal is inferred about who you are. For the last two years I have had to live up, or down, to all of the stereotypes that go along with NorCal and Davis.

The same form of identification by Hometown was also prevalent while I lived in Brazil, or when I have traveled abroad. It wasn’t until recently, reflecting about my parents move, that I have come to realize how much a part of me that little city is, and how much I miss being away.

Where we are from seems all the more important the farther we go.

Friends

After the wedding in South Lake Tahoe, and Joe and my trip to Yosemite we stopped in Woodland so that I could have a quick dinner with J and Phil before heading out on the train from Davis to the Bay Area. It had been far too long since we had all been together. It wasn’t more than 10 minutes before I was laughing so hard that tears were rolling down my cheeks.

J had us all enthralled as he told us stories of the sieges of Constantinople that he had been researching. It was great to be able to sit with him, Phil and my brother and trade stories that we had read, some that we had lived through, as well as our latest theories on life. In many ways Davis still feels like home most because they are still in the area.


A Marvelous Place

A few years ago a fellow student at Vanderbilt, when he discovered my hometown, remarked “what in the world is there to do in Northern California?” I remember being absolutely puzzled, since almost all of my previous experiences had ranged from “Northern California is beautiful” to “I have always dreamed of going to California, do you know Mel Gibson?” So, after taking a few seconds to recover I simply started to list the great things within a few hours drive of my hometown. Here is a partial list of what I repeated back to my colleague:

San Francisco – Union Square Shopping, Trolley Cars, Golden Gate Bridge, Ocean Beach, Chinatown….etc.
Silicon Valley – Technology/Economic powerhouse that has not yet been duplicated
Yosemite – Climbing, backpacking and animal watching paradise!
Lake Tahoe – World class skiing!
Monterey/Carmel – Great restaurants, beautiful beaches, world’s premiere aquarium, incredible scuba diving, Whale watching tours (where you can be in pods with THOUSANDS of dolphins!)
Point Reyes – Where you can stand on an earthquake fault line, and see sea lion colonies
Santa Cruz – Surfing, Boardwalk
Marin County – Birthplace of mountain biking...come to think of it, CA is the birthplace of most “extreme” sports and at the very least you can do almost everything in NorCal.
Redwoods – Whether Armstrong, Santa Cruz or Humboldt County they are hard to surpass
Caverns – Black Chasm, Moaning Cavern, Mercer or the hundreds of unnamed caverns of the Sierra Nevada
Sacramento Valley – State Capital, Old town, Gold Rush History
Mt. Shasta – Nothing like seeing this mountain rising from the valley floor
Lassen – Hot springs, waterfalls, crazy volcanic activity

…you get the picture…

Again, when you live in a place it is so easy to forget all the great and wondrous things that are so close. Not realizing that people around the world are dreaming of being where you already are. (For those of you who are still in the area, be sure to see all that you can while you are there. There are few places, if any, which are as wonderfully diverse as Northern California.)

But beyond all of the things that you would find in a tour guide of the area it always seems to be the little things that I miss. As Joe drove me back from Woodland to Davis through the farmland that separates the two cities we gazed upon one of the classic Sacramento valley sunsets. Since the coastal range blocks the sun as it goes down in the West the sunsets are long as the light is reflected against the low clouds that gather in the Delta. The view was unobstructed since there is little cloud cover over the central valley during the summer. Now, I have seen prettier sunsets, but I don’t remember ever being in a place where they are so clear, and frequent.



And I often forget the magic of the Delta breeze. Even on the hottest days the evenings in Davis are almost always pleasant. The breeze picks up in the late afternoon, and cools everything down with a slow draft of crisp air.

Leaving

That evening, after talking with J and Phil, my brother drove me to the train station in Davis. Winding our way through downtown Davis I was struck by the familiarity of the place…vivid memories of every street, stories for every corner.

Standing with my bags, waiting for the train, I couldn't help but ponder how quickly life can change. My whole life seemed to revolve around the city of Davis, even when I was thousands of miles away. On that platform it felt like a chapter in my life had been written and finally, in some fashion, sealed.

When the train pulled away I expected to be sad, but instead I only felt content. Content that I would be back many times to see my friends, and thankful for having had the privilege to grow up in such a wonderful place.