Welcome To Paradise

Welcome to Paradise.

All that its name implies.

Yes, folks. I am from Paradise.

Paradise, California.

 Welcome.  Side note: some friends of mine took a plastic plate or something, painted their initials on it and nailed it up on this sign.  It was there for years before it was discovered and taken down. (photo: activerain.com)

Oh, you thought..? No, not Hawaii.  Not somewhere tropical or sandy. We have things like clampers, a gold nugget museum and Johnny Appleseed Days.  We have hazy, smoky falls and the stormiest storms you've ever seen in the winter.

Paradise is in NorCal.  Growing up there, nestled in the foothills and surrounded by trees and mountains and nature, I thought it was the most boring place in the world.  Then I went to Yuma. (just kidding.  I've never been to Yuma.)

It's a smallish town, but that's relative.  About 25,000 people, so small, but not like where my Grandpa grew up: Walnut, Iowa--population 800.  In Paradise you knew a lot of people, but not every one.  In high school you also knew a lot of people, but not everyone.  

I moved there when I was 5 or 6.  My parents bought a wooded acre and my dad was going to build us a house.  And he did.  It took about 4 years.  And we lived in a trailer in the meantime.  A tiny trailer with a swamp cooler, my bedroom so small the dresser and the door hit each other, my brother sleeping in my parents' room for a few years (Lord knows what atrocities he was privy to in those years) and a kitchen that really was a kitchenette.  It was kind of like camping for four years.  

But oh my.

The woods.  I would run and play for hours! I found and followed trails, pretending I was an Indian or a princess or a horse (sometimes even a pegasus!). I would steal eggs from the neighbor's hen house and make mud pies with them.  I would chase quail through the brush.  There were wild peacocks and I would hear their distinctive caws.  I would find newborn fawns, scare the pellets out of deer while tearing through the trails on my Huffy and climb trees (and fall out of them).  

My parents set me up with a little watch with a timer.  When it beeped, it meant I had 5 minutes to high-tail it home or face the consequences.  I was 7 or so and literally gone for hours.  Didn't my parents worry?  I don't know if I could let Brixton disappear like that.  Even when our neighbors had warned of a mountain lion sighting (and found a torn apart deer in the same area I played) I wasn't kept inside.

Mom? Any comment here?

One year it snowed in March.  7 inches.  I tramped around the forest, amazed at the difference snow made.  Alone in the quiet woods.  Imagination gone wild.

I only had one neighborhood friend and we devised a calendar which indicated on which days we were allowed to fight, so you can imagine how that went.  I didn't need friends though.  I was so involved in exploring and playing and imagining. It was wonderful.

So, for me, this was paradise. I spent so much time alone, collecting manzanita berries, discovering bugs and snakes, eating fruit off of trees from other people's yards.

So much fun.