what i realized on one sunny day in california

Loving California means that your shoulders are always bare so that the sun can reach down and kiss them. It's wearing flip flops just in case you need to be barefoot at a moment's notice. It means sleeping with your window open and it means going to the store to buy an energy drink and a single avocado. It means getting gas is fun because even as your spirits drop watching one number go up so much faster than the other, they can't drop far in this kind of sun.

Loving California means you're constantly distracted from the mundane because beauty is everywhere. It means you feed off those ephemeral days where you taste salt when you breathe and the light is a certain shade of gold you haven't seen since you were four-- days where each time you step outside you start to believe that magic might be real. It means the ocean is freezing cold because it's wild and true, and when you get out your head rings quiet like it is underneath the waves. It means ugly new buildings on old, old land that still feels untouched. It means highways and traffic lights and cement and even with all of that humanity is so quiet, because nature is so loud.

Loving California means that you don't consider yourself much of an outdoors person, until you leave and suddenly you're starving for air. Breathing doesn't fill you the way it used to and you're itching in your body. It means that you will come back, and day by day the sun crisps your skin until one morning you wake up and realize your feet are facing forward again. It means that as young and free as you are, some part of you will always need this water, air, and land. Some part of you will always be here.