I didn’t travel to Sun Valley Idaho to write about Ernest Hemingway. As a journalist, I had two assignments: the vibrant local food scene and the area’s year-round attractions. I had a vague recollection that Hemingway had lived in the area.

I grew up with a mother who came from the Southern Hemisphere, from Down Under, from Australia. She stood out in our small California town, with her strong Australian accent.

On our first night in Athens, as my husband and I sat at dinner, we could see the Acropolis (which means literally “High Hill”) lit up and stunning in the distance. The next morning, early, we climbed the hill to tour the buildings and learn about the history.

“I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”

Anne Frank

I can still remember the first time I visited a public library. I was about five and tagging along with my 12-year-old brother. It was the 1950s and I remember the high shelves crammed full of red and brown leather-bound books. Dust motes danced as the sun streamed in the tall windows.

I am looking down on birds. Their white feathers glint in the afternoon sunlight. I admire their flight patterns from above, their coordinated dance as they soar together, floating through the air, high above the green paddocks below.

I am higher, but not so high that I could have missed them, that they could have blended with the farmland below.

A Southern California neighborhood, a mixture of the upper middle class who drive giant SUVs and the working folks who ride the bus. Old and new. Anglo and Hispanic.

One place that those cultures can overlap is in the local thrift stores.

A walk through the garden this morning revealed a tiny pumpkin, alongside a bright orange blossom waiting to be pollinated by the bees.

Just 13 kilometers away from the bustling city of Annecy, sharing the same pure, sparkling water of the lake that shares the city’s name, the village of Talloires goes relatively unnoticed.

I was 17, a senior in high school and had to do a report for my French 3 class, so headed off to the Escondido Public Library to find a topic. No internet then. Among the books I pulled off the shelf, I found one with photographs of Mont St. Michel, a monastery just off the coast of Normandy.

I remember…

1970, the San Francisco Sunday paper, fat and full of magic, sitting on the doorstep. It would provide precious, stolen moments from my life as the young mother of a toddler. I’d have one eye on her, as I opened the paper and dove into its contents.

A winter morning at the farm…

Before I bought the apple farm in 1997, I used to visit the elderly couple, Willi and Maria, who lived here.

As much as I hate to think the word ‘drought’ in case I’m creating more reality to it with my thoughts, we are experiencing the driest summer I can remember in my twenty-four years in Northern California.