For "Wide Open Spaces" / "Views Across Valleys" Essay

The mountains are still magic with snow.  I can’t help musing on the quality of life “before”, when not tiny, occasional, fragmentary glimpses, but the whole grand sweep of the mountain ridge could be taken in from almost any spot on the coastal plain.

Now, no place in “our” California can these scenes be admired, except where the mountains are so close and so high that they loom above the city (as in southern California—but there, the air has become so thick . . .).

Now all the richest vie for the best “view lots”, the view they are seeking not being the clear, sun-at-back view of the mountains, but the hazy-glare view of the ocean.

Views out over everyone else’s roofs and wires and satellite dishes.  BFD.  Oh well, at night at least . . . there are the lights.