It’s not the same for everyone
Story and photo by Stacey Warde
I miss the conversations about watersheds and droughts and trees. Or how many pigs came down out of the hills last night to wreak havoc on the orchards and irrigation lines in search of food and water, or where the coyotes keep their dens. Or how many chickens were killed by the bobcat that lives down in the hollow underneath the old abandoned school bus.
More often, the conversations I hear today in Orange County revolve around sports or fitness and cars and jobs and burnout and crime rates and the occasional coyote roaming down suburban streets taking out neighborhood dogs and cats.
Outside of promises of the good life, such as they are in Orange County, there is no life. That’s the sense I get from this place after moving here nearly one year ago from Mendocino County, where there are more trees than people. Prior to that, I lived in San Luis Obispo County for almost 40 years, much of that time on a ranch in a tiny house of 300 square feet, not in a multi-million dollar monstrosity of thousands of square feet in the middle of endless suburbia. This modern El Dorado I live in now, Orange County, is the golden mean for quality of life, if you listen closely to those who love living here.
“I wouldn’t live anywhere else,” I’ve heard people say while others nod in agreement.
For some reason, my brain wants to imagine Orange County the way it was 40 years ago when I first fled the area for greener pastures, which thankfully I found in Cayucos, California, a beach haven not unlike the Laguna Beach I knew as a child.
The OC, as they call it now, resembles nothing close to what it was when I was growing up here, or what I still imagine it to be with ranches and orchards and open fields. I recently discovered to my dismay that those features have long since disappeared while taking two hours to find a friend’s home only 20 minutes away in Huntington Beach.
The entire drive, which should have been easy, felt like a test flight for a fighter pilot. While trying to figure out where I was, looking in every direction for a familiar sign, an impatient driver behind me started madly honking his horn and waving his arms in great distress. If looks could kill, his scowling and fretful face would do the trick, and I would be dead.
I know the feeling, buddy, I thought, waving your arms isn’t going to help you. Believe me, I know, you look like an idiot flapping your gums and waving your hands in anger while driving solo in heavy traffic. Been there, done that. He pulled out from behind me in a sudden bolt and showed me his middle finger as he drove by and aggressively cut me off with a sharp, dangerous turn into my lane. Road rage runs rampant.
I kept my cool, which isn’t like me. Ordinarily, I would have shown the same foolish disdain by offering him my middle finger and flapping my gums as a greeting. But I’m trying to get away from that type of bad behavior, which I see everywhere on the roads. I’ve seen lots of that around here, as often on the roads and freeways as among the many homeless who wander the streets in search of refuge. This is quality of life? Now, he’s one car length ahead of me, no longer waving his arms or flapping his gums. All that wasted angry energy to get his one useless car length advantage. That’s Orange County: Crowded freeways, entitled angry murderous drivers, overworked populace, expensive, unaffordable homes, the appearance of wealth and success, tons of debt and graft.
Then, my Google GPS told me to turn onto the Santa Ana River Trail made for bicycles only. I turned off the GPS after two hours of driving and said: “Fuck!”
Thankfully, I wasn’t far from my destination. I pulled into a crowded Costco parking lot, where most if not all of Orange County does its shopping, a favorite pastime here. I made the call and got directions to my desired location only blocks away. The traffic. OMG! I gave up herds of cattle blocking the road home for this?
No doubt, the ornamental trees in Orange County show the wonders of a fine climate, which so far is the only real attraction I can rightfully attach to the place. The citrus orchards that gave the county its name have all but disappeared. I see cars and row after row of houses. More cars. More houses. Little slices of “paradise,” at home in the best climate in the world. And a lot of frustrated angry people (in paradise?). Am I missing something? Perhaps I haven’t given it enough time? Where are the orchards and fields and farmworkers? Why do they call this Orange County?
I once got into a conversation regarding the wisdom and shame of removing an old oak tree, probably hundreds of years old, because its deep roots were sucking dry the well we depended upon for drinking water and showers and gardening, water designated for domestic use. Water for livestock and orchards were seldom at risk. Our home water use depended mostly on necessity rather than convenience. We showered, for example, not every day as they do here but only when essential, when the stink of chickens got so bad we had no choice. We treated our water and trees and livestock as precious resources. We were connected to nature. It was essential for our survival.
We studied the watershed that fed the creek and the wells and reservoirs. We knew when we were in trouble and when there was plenty. Our water wasn’t assured, there was no water company to secure and process this precious resource; it was clean and drawn from the pristine, environmentally sound, hills above and around us. We welcomed the rain. The runoff served us well, without an influx of bacteria threatening major health hazards and closing popular beaches.
Here, I get the feeling, precious resources, trees, water, wildlife, even beaches, come as an afterthought, after another grueling day at work, after the baby is fed and put to bed, after beating traffic to get home, after the dishes are put away. After another unsuccessful turn of putting off a lover’s sexual advances. After exhaustion sets in. After suicidal thoughts have been momentarily banished.
In El Dorado, water is water. Gold is what you need and want. But if you prefer water, all you have to do is turn on the faucet and see! — Water! Spend time in nature? Escape the rat race? Boy, wouldn’t that be nice, but there’s gold around here somewhere.
OC is a shower-every-day kind of place. With sun, beaches, parties and posturing, and a sometimes semi-arid climate, sports to play and gyms to visit, you don’t go to the clubs later without getting showered and dressed and looking fine, which is an important part of life here. Netflix and chill is more of a country thing, I think, but one would hope there’s plenty of that too in Orange County.
Meanwhile, a hawk slices through the air to enter the protective cover of an enormous ancient pine tree across the street to rustle smaller birds and mammals (tree squirrels). The commotion and squealing of the tree’s inhabitants is a familiar sound. I hope the hawk wins. I don’t think squirrels are cute. They’re a nuisance for farmers and they make good food for coyotes and bobcats, prey for raptors, which still make their rounds here. I’ve watched the squirrels jump from the street wires onto our lone avocado tree, another ancient survivor of Orange County, to search for food. In the wild, I’d shoot it because that’s what you do if you want to eat.
I know that change is the only constant in life; nothing stays the same. I know this yet I’m shocked at how much has changed since leaving here so many decades ago. I also know there were cruel exiles in ancient Rome and Greece meant to punish and diminish a person, which is kind of how I feel now in my own particular self-imposed exile from the beauty I knew in Cayucos, but who nonetheless came out ok in the end. Exiles who showed character, Musonius Rufus, for example, found purpose wherever they landed, however they were treated. I hope to find a similar purpose here, made from character and virtue rather than entitlement, and make the right connections, before my dying day or before being overtaken by another driver on the rampage.
In the end, the survivors and people who prospered in exile were the ones whose character brought them to safety and a sense of well being. Here, in El Dorado, gangsters and Disney and grimy politicians seem to prosper most. Here, people are judged more often by the cars they drive, titles they hold, and houses they own rather than by the strength of their character. Thug culture, I call it.
Those who live here seem to love it and I have yet to understand why, not when you compare it to life in the wild where one is truly free though more likely to run into bears or a herd of cattle than countless cars speeding down the freeway with angry drivers threatening murder and mayhem. In the wild, as elsewhere one would hope, conversations have meaning and purpose, and quality of life starts with how one chooses to live.
Stacey Warde is adapting to thug culture while searching for integrity and honesty.
