THIS, is where I live.

(Click on the small image to load a much larger image that can be zoomed to full size, allowing you to pan back and forth and vertically. Really, do it! This little image does *not* do it justice. Update: after clicking on the image, you have to click the embiggenizer to get it full-size. Internet Explorer has a big button that appears in the lower right corner of the image. With Firefox you just hover over the image and a 'plus' sign appears. Click the image with that to embiggen. Oddball browsers...you're on your own.)

Daisycat and I took a hike across the river and up into the hills on the far side after Thanksgiving dinner Thursday. I took this series of photos from a trail halfway up the first set of hills as they rise out of the valley bottom.

You have seen many photos of my place up close, this is the context--the stunning valley in which my place is nestled.

My sister disparages this land as being desolate and inhospitable...

...I look at her and wonder who put the clouds in her eyes.

It is austere, to be sure, but it is an austerity that is wracked with beauty.

This is where I always wanted to live. I saw it in my minds eye years before I ever found it. The green carpeted hills rising out of the valley, layer upon layer fading into the horizon, backed by the high mountains blue in the distance.

I don't see the valley like this from my place--down in the trees looking up it is different. But I catch a glimpse of a view very much like this every time I come home during daylight hours--as I turn off the pavement and start to make my way down the gravel road into the valley bottom, such a view greets me at every turn of the road until I reach the fork in the road that takes me upriver to my home.

It is marvelous to behold the specific panorama that contains my little patch of paradise however.

Labels: San Pedro homestead