Yep. I’m in love. Today I got a ride with Ted into town early, and hiked up to the Arboretum. Filled with flora from California, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa, I could barely take two steps before finding some exotic succulent, or a bench nestled among rare red-flowering eucalyptus, or scurrying rabbits and quail. I met the curator — oh how I covet his job! — and let my eyes guide my barely-clad feet through this wonderland garden.

Walking through the upper neighborhoods I found a perfect triangle patch of land for sale, overlooking a crested view of the bay, and surrounded by charming houses nested in lush, colorful gardens. No price, but it’s better that way. I need to send my parents on a pilgrimage first. Like-minded people, decent public transportation, beautiful neighborhoods, pedestrian and bicycle friendly, the only thing lacking is an eminently affordable cost of living. Real estate prices reflect the desiribility of a place, and Barbara warned that choosing a cheaper location got her house broken into five times in nine months — elsewhere there’s gang violence. Needless to say, she moved.

Next stop was the UC Santa Cruz campus. The students hurried through forest pathways and over foot bridges, taking for granted the park-like atmosphere and even a family of deer calmly grazing by the side of a classroom building. Elsewhere there are rolling fields, and food-producing gardens fed by student composting efforts. I finally grabbed a bus back to town, happy to rest my feet and refuel with a wrap from the little one-woman sidewalk cafe,  Alfresco.

I got to the library, the bookstore, and submitted my application to New Leaf organic grocery before Ted picked me up again on his way back. In the evening we watched the news (aka The Daily Show) and the Olympics, savoring the speedball slalome and the gracefully stunning figure skating, interspersed with conversation about Buddhism, Burning Man, and Ted’s own experiences at the Olympics as a gymnastics coach and international judge. He talked about how the US is slipping into a Third World country, and how capitalism and the military are preventing us from making our schools and transit systems and industry top-notch — instead we’re patching holes in a sinking boat as the infrastructure becomes outdated and degraded.

Of course, with all the traveling he and Barbara do, they see the effects of extreme thinking all over. In Turkey you can hardly mention human rights, and women are pressured to stay out of politics altogether. Politics is about compromise and reconciliation instead of creating a world we’d all like to see. Ted grew up in an era of the Can-Do attitude, and he’s seen how people can create an entire city without money or violence — the sharing of art, intellect, goods, and services he’s seen at Burning Man. Much as the authors of Cradle to Cradle advocate hinking of ways we can increase our positive impact on the environment rather than simply being “less bad,” Ted and Barbara seem to hope and work for changes in the way we interact, making the world not only safe and peaceful but vibrant and alive.

Now the question is how to act in a way the increases the meaningful connections between people, throughout time and space, and our habitats and cultures? As Ted said, the best thing would be if the Dalai Llama was ruler of the world — but if he was, he wouldn’t have to rule at all, because it would only happen when we all agreed that compassion was more valuable than currency.

With the promise of making it down to Santa Cruz in the afternoon and the weather miraculously clearing up, Ted took me on his daily hike in the nearby redwoods. Clearcut a century ago to quarry lime, you would neve guess you could have seen much sky, the place is so lush. The rainfall made the creek strong and confident, singing in many voices like a low-fequency Tuvan throat-singer. Ted shared his Zen spots and pointed out a colorful fungi and a little shrine. Instead of a spectacle that takes your breath away, like a roaring waterfall or a dusky mountain, a forest seeps into your soul and becomes your breath. You become an instant in the life of those moss-robed trees, but at the same time the most significant instant.

The microclimates are myriad here, though. Twenty minutes away from what could practically be the Olympic Penninsula was the sunny, surfing downtown Santa Cruz. The main street was designed for pedestrians, with sidewalks big enough to put food kiosks and outdoor seating in he middle of them. Students and musically inclined homeless made the place more than a shopping district, though it was lined with eco-friendly botiques and cafes. The spirit is environmentally- and socially-consious, and I was lucky enough to be there for the year-round farmer’s market, a foodie’s dream, sporting local organic produce from oranges to kale to walnuts, and fresh almond milk, sorbet, and saurkraut. I filled up on samples and stuffed me bag before heading down to the beach.

I remembered the warf from my previous visit, a long boardwalk with shops and restaurants at the end, and seagulls and pelicans and surf bums and homeless bums. Children played on the sand and surfers bobbed in the waves waiting for the next good ride to shore. The eucalyptus and orange trees shaded townhouses, beach cottages, and mission-style architecture along the side streets.

Reluctantly I got on the bus back to Felton. Barbara helped me get a handle on the job and real estate market, pointing me to a place up the road from UCSC where there’s abundant farmland where you can grow bananas, yet still on a bus route. You can also rent little studio cottages right in town for reasonable rates — a great idea for testing the waters if only anyone was hiring!

It could just be the unseasonable sunshine, but this place could be the place. Yet knowing that I have found it makes the search less urgent, because I know I can come back here someday. I know my little half acre will be waiting for me.

Travel day. Jessica and her mom spent the morning struggling furiously to get everything packed, including gaggles of gifts for their family. Jessica’s sister, Jennifer, and I hugged and waved them on their way, then we made our own way to the Caltrain station, and I headed off to Santa Cruz. It was not a direct flight, with a transfer in San Jose that had me running to buy bananas to get exact  change for the bus, and in Scotts Valley I missed my pickup when Ben’s mom, Barbara, called out for “Amy.” I walked around the suburby sleepy town, and read in the library until I could get ahold of her and Ted, Ben’s dad.

Oh but it was worth the wait! They live in a craftsman-style house, covered in shingle siding and embedded in the redwood rainforest of Felton. The windows and skylights reveal only green and the musical notes of the rain. I curled up in their reading room, a flat platform sporting pillows and a comforter, and drank tea in a Mexican mug while absorbing the positive thinking of Cradle to Cradle.

Jessica’s mom rules the day! She decided to take me out to Golden Gate Bridge, and after days of gloom and the occasional doom, we got clear blue skies to play the backdrop to the structure’s vermillion towers. After a photo-op and a great view of the harbor, we continued on to Sausalito in the pretty hills on the other side of the Bay. An expensive seaside tourist town much like the place I grew up, but not particularly heart-grabbing, the place nonetheless provided familiar tidal smells and a salty breeze, even a little foot ferry! I managed to fall and scrape my hands on the sidewalk, though, causing Jessica and her mom to wonder if I was this clumsy all the time — really, I’ve tripped all of a quarter dozen times in my life, and apparently Jessica is there for more than one of them.

We had pizza by the docks, then hurried home so that Jessica and her mom could pack for Korea — Jessica is going for a year to teach English, and her mom is helping her get settled. Meanwhile, I spent the afternoon hunting and applying for jobs. I was so engrossed that I hardly noticed the time fly by until it was time for dinner! Jessica’s mother treated me to a Korean feast: rice speckled with beans, with sides of kimchee, steamed asparagus, sweet and spicy lotus root, edamame, and pickled jalapeno daikon. This was really amazing food, and I love how traditional Korean meals are served as rice with a series of condiments, which you can easily make in large batches and store in the refrigerator and serve in those cute Japanese dishes I’m always admiring. All the fermented foods make it as healthy as it is delicious. Jessica’s family also introduced me to purple sweet potatoes, also known as taro, which they simply roast and eat out of the peel with a dessert spoon — it’s so sweet and smooth, it’s like some sort of purple custard.

Thank you, Jessica’s mom, for all your advice, your food, your hospitality. You are the best host!

Ah, the good old days of playing board games in the dark. Does anyone else have fond memories of blackouts? Bainbridge had them every year, and sometimes the power would go out for days. We would trek down to the pizza place, usually through a layer of white snow, and warm ourselves over fresh gas-oven baked slices. At home we would bring blankets and sleeping bags around the fireplace and play chess, and when it got too dark, we would fall asleep by the dying embers.

I enjoyed some alone-time while Jessica and her family went to church, and they returned with a group of Jessica’s Korean friends to play Settlers of Catan. We got two games going, and the one I was in lasted forever… until all of a sudden we were all a point away from winning and it was all over in one round. Suffice to say I didn’t win. Entering our second game, though, the power blinked off. Poof! No electricity! Apparently these things are rare occurrences in San Francisco these days (probably due to the lack of trees). As things got darker, we just brought out candles, and squinted to differentiate colors on the board. The other, faster, group moved on to Jenga in the Dark, which added points of acoustic interest to the evening.

I didn’t win again, but the power came back on in time to pack things away and send the folks off to study. Ah, school… there’s always school to return to after the blissful failure of technology, isn’t there?