I feel really connected with San Diego. I didn’t used to feel so connected. After hiking around San Diego so much over the last year or so I start to recognize the landscape where ever I go. For instance I’ve now hiked El Cajon Mountain Twice. I never used to recognize El Cajon Mountain in the background scenery of San Diego, it was just back there like some stage prop that was never fully appreciated. Now that I’ve been up and down that mountain several times I seem to recognize that mountain from where ever I am in San Diego, it doesn’t just sit in the background, it seems to stand out in my vision where ever I seem to be. This morning I was leaving a client’s house in La Jolla and as I drove east towards Mira Mesa I could see El Cajon Mountain in front of me outlined by the Cuyamaca Mountains behind it. Seeing that vision and knowing where a majority of the landmarks are in San Diego makes me feel more connected, more a part of the scene I’m looking at rather than just observing. Whenever I hike now I get to the top of a peak and I start looking for landmarks, “over there, I can see Mt Baldy, or over there I can see Mt Woodson”, I feel like my internal compass has been set and now I’m more in-tune with the landscape. I can only imagine how this feeling will grow, recently I meet someone in my hiking group that has been hiking San Diego for Decades. He was a good friend with Jerry Schad ( a man whose book “Afoot and Afield” are the definitive bible of hiking in San Diego), he had been out and hiked the Goat Canyon Trestle hike that we were on many a time, and as he was hiking I noticed this same connection with him. He would start pointing out the landmarks around us, telling us the history behind the landmarks, what had changed and the stories in his life that went along with those landmarks, he was defiantly a man who was connected with San Diego, someone who was part of the play and not just observing it from afar. Take a hike this weekend. Get out there and connect with your city. You may just start seeing everything around you from a new perspective.
