Where the West Begins

Sunday we drove out east of Los Angeles to the Cal Poly campus in the Pomona Valley. Along the university's central drive horses graze in paddocks, their chestnut coats gleaming in the inland sun. Sheep gather in woolly clusters, enjoying the breeze down by the road. Trellises heavy with vines, break over the crest of a hill. And up near the dormitories, roses bloom and wither in an ornamental garden. You may know that I like to view things through the lens of a romanticized history. When it comes to the valleys that surround the city of Los Angeles, now overtaken by suburban sprawl, I linger on surviving pockets of the rural past, imagining the way the land once was - the ranches, the citrus groves. A western paradise out "California way" as Bing Crosby sings in a cowboy's tune about the San Fernando Valley.