California

Paintings by Vicki Asp. Available for purchase at www.vickiasp.com.

I had a nightmare last night in which I was walking through a dusty northern California town, sobbing because of the beauty of it and because I was homesick for the oak-dotted hills of my youth. Then a seven-fingered man came running out of a nearby barn, peppering me with rocks. I learned later that his name was Pickles, and that he had lost his other digits by soaking them too long in vinegar.


There's something breathtakingly, heartwrenchingly beautiful about a golden hillside scattered with live oaks (or, better yet, November's light green blush of new growth). As much as I appreciate the dense, green aliveness of Western Washington, there's nothing like a long, soaring ridge line amid that sea of waving grass.


Is this a universal phenomenon? Do we all experience nostalgia (the pain, to translate literally from the Greek, of wishing to return home) for our childhood landscapes? Or is it perhaps reserved for those of us who enjoyed our childhoods, or who grew up happily? Who grew up in a landscape suitable to our spirits?