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The Beautiful Land
Notes from a drive through the Central Valley
Today is a travel day, and it started with a glorious detour.
There was a wreck on 99 (shocking, I know), so my nav system routed me along Peltier Road to get to I-5. Peltier road runs through Lodi, which in my lifetime has become one of the most important wine-making regions in the world.
Along my detour — just five or six miles, if I recall — I passed vineyard after vineyard, the leaves turning green to gold. The smell of ripe grapes was everywhere. I am sure some of the varietals had been harvested, but as I sped past the rows closest to the road I could see here and there shapely bunches of deep purple grapes dangling down behind the gilding canopy of leaves. I passed fig orchards, vineyards bordered by aged walnut trees, other vineyards bordered by robust olives. Everywhere I looked was beauty and bounty.
I got on I-5 and to my surprise I passed three tomato gondolas piled high with crimson fruit. Somewhere in the valley, maybe up in Woodside, a tomato cannery is still steaming along through the autumn.
On either side of the road I saw the bounty of the land — herds of beef cattle, dairies, flocks of sheep and flocks of goats, freshly mown hay drying in the morning sun in river bottom land. And in the wetlands verging the Mokelumne River, thick stands of tule grass waved gently in the morning breeze.
This is the beautiful land, the giving land. This is home. There truly is no place like it.
Now I sit in the airport, my flight delayed, worried about missing my connection. It will be a long day. But what a beginning. What a blessing.
