Santa Barbara

The pink city sits atop the crown, like a luminous opal, shifting in the light, expanding like the Pacific plate, glued to the canvas of a sultry Monet portrait that rides a pale blue sea. Writers come to feel it, students rally upon its breast, the elderly who made staying real rock in their chairs with the soft glossy stare of abundance. And the hikers press their boots against the soft earth of the velvet mountains that hug this quick stretch of California, knowing that winter never really comes.