I say someday I will go back there…the rolling hills of California outside of San Francisco because, there, it is just cool enough to give me perpetual goose bumps and an inability to taste anything but the chattering of my teeth. But this is what I remember from California…not the steep sidewalks of uneven cement and cars parked on inclines almost vertical. Not the loss of breath from undulating angles of hills.

*

The landscape changing, buildings melting into soft rolling hills and plush grassy fields dotted with bursts of color as our rental car picked up speed beyond the highway. Black pavement transformed into rich dirt roads and pebbled paths leading up to rows and columns of deep green vines speckled with grapes. I knew better than to pick one off a stray vine but I did anyway and my father pretended not to see. And the sun on the back of my shoulders felt like hands just extracted from warm water, rays pouring down my back like left over water droplets. I remember a taste in the air after the single stolen grape only left remnants of its sweet sour juice, a bit of skin stuck between my teeth. And I think maybe this is what the sun tastes like or perhaps my adolescence, sweet with sour undertones and unearthed secrets.

We drove down the pebbled path a ways, tired crunching under little stones and the open windows let in the salty dust I felt on my open mouth. I learned to taste the earth that day.

And demanded from the back seat that we stop, park and walk. So I could feel those pebbles under my sandals and explore a land that seemed unworldly.

Exploring a part of a state that is more like a country all of its own. Because I had been to the beaches of California when I was younger and these hills weren’t of sand and bare bodies but of green with tips of white hot from the suns rays.

Where fried foods in vats of oil were alien and the shack like grocery stores held wonders in jars and reveries in waiting behind glass cases.

Meandering though the gourmet grocery store, my hands wandered along shelves, picking up cans and chalices, flasks and jugs of exotic goods…pearl onions in sweet vinegar, sun dried tomato stuff olives,

Pastel shards of colored salt: fumme de sel, Cyprus flake and fleur de sel, reminding me of crystals from some deep unexplored cave

We settle for small plastic containers of marinated artichoke and grilled eggplant, my father beckoning to me to the premade food case that held accouterments of deep smoky hues: thin slices of coppa and prosciutto di parma, long, wand-like spears of grilled asparagus tips gleaming in the light, bowls and platters brimming with chunks of tomato and gleaming white nodules of mozzarella

My father chooses the prosciutto wrapped in deli paper and selects a chunk of blue cheese from another case filled with blocks of parmesan, gruyere and manchego, in ascending colors from white to crème with veins of blue to yellow and buttery orange.

To be continued tomorrow…