California seems to exist on the knife edge of contemporary America. The cultural expansiveness, natural beauty and artistic expression which have long entranced dreamers and schemers to head West still exerts its gravitational pull. And yet another California has risen—one of mudslides and drought, traffic clot and suburban sprawl, and absurd wealth inequality. It’s simultaneously the land of hippie experimentation and capital injection—Hollywood glitz and migrant labor.
This past winter, while visiting from New York, my wife and I undertook a lazy road trip through the state, exploring locations both known and new to us. We travelled 2,000 miles over two weeks, from Los Angeles to San Diego, up the desert to Joshua Tree, across the great Central Valley via Bakersfield to the cliffs of Big Sur, down the winding PCH to the outpost of Ojai and back through LA.