I forgot how much I love this place—ripe red fruit, cars that stop for crosswalks, cool fog on summer mornings, and fall evenings rolling warm and thick as honey from the hills down to the Bay. These first weeks back have been about the rediscovery of old pleasures: walks down College in the lingering Indian summer; hikes in the mountains, up past the hills, bleak and sculptural under their vellum skin, forest air dusty with dry pine and incense cedar. And new ones: the groan and musk of Berkeley brown-shingles, frenzied brunches at the Thai temple Mongkolratanaram, and noontime carillon concerts.
But I find that I’ve grown attached to seasons, miss the changing of leaves (our handful of firetruck sweetgums a poor substitute for the extravagant hardwood forests of the East) and the smell of new snow. It will be a poor winter without scarves and padded jackets, with birds singing straight through December and the redwoods green all year round.
I can’t complain—my knuckles no longer blister with cold, and there are fresh vegetables whenever I want them. I needed continuous sunlight for the first seventeen years of my life; I may grow to need it again.