We were driving from San Francisco up to my parent's home in Arcata, about five hours north. Me, my sister, my brother-in-law. We all live in New York City, but we were on vacation. As we passed through the Napa Valley and somebody said, "Ah, isn't it beautiful here? I do miss nature sometimes."
I looked up. Golden rolling hills, wisps of clouds in the azure blue sky, the flickering rows of the vineyards, perhaps a cow or a sheep. Since forever, as a child, a priori, I have believed in the beauty of California. It's a promised land. Even people in Wisconsin know that. But this time, after being away for several years, it suddenly struck me differently. I had the same feeling that one has upon seeing a Pomeranian. It's nature, but not really. It's an animal shorn of 99% of the things that make an animal an animal. Napa Valley: same thing. It's nature in its most domesticated, luxurious, simplified, soporific form. Now, I'm not opposed to Man conquering Nature. I can appreciate a quarry or a cornfield--they have aesthetics and purpose and they have meaning. But Napa Valley has none of these things. It's a playland, a trifle, a cupcake. It's a footnote to an idea of something that we want or once had, it's an allusion.
Take me back to New York. Or let's keep driving, all the way up to Alaska, where I once saw a moose so black it looked like a piece of the world had been punched out in a moose-shaped shape.
