Some where in the back of my mind I have always known I lived in an exceptional place, it just wasn’t often that I cared to appreciate it. I used to make up stories about adventures in far away lands and imagine myself in a thousand places, anywhere but home. The exciting and the extraordinary was always beyond that next mountain or underneath the crashing waves of the sea, but never did I look at the mountains or the ocean right in front of me.

This is not to say that I didn’t love growing up in Santa Cruz, because I did and still do, it just simply means I never saw the fantastical qualities that I dreamed of in the place where I lived my everyday life. I never realized the fairy circles in the redwoods, or the glint of the sun on the sea, the way the wind swept across grassy hillside like a fingers running through feather soft hair. The world I felt I had to create when I was younger, was the world I was already residing in, I just didn’t know it yet.

Maybe it was when I left for college, or maybe it has been a building wave that has been gathering for some time within me, all I know now is the overwhelming appreciation and awe I have for my home in Santa Cruz.

There is so much I love about Santa Cruz; I realize that I do not have to escape this place to find adventure or fantastical things, I just need to step out of my front door. That is why for Christmas we stuck around town and for our Christmas Day we went hiking along the Davenport Bluffs and then took in the stormy skies from the Santa Cruz Wharf. It is nice to take a vacation in your own town, to make the everyday new again in the most exciting of ways.

Look upon your world with new eyes and see what there is to find. You may just be surprised to behold the imaginary world you spent your whole life searching for.