56 years, and a final walk in the trees

My parents bought 80 acres in 1966, in the middle of Glenn County, when my oldest sister was 2 years old, and second sister was 6 weeks.

Most of the land was planted with almond trees, a relatively new crop for Northern California, but those trees came with the promise of a stable future for a young family.

On a bit less than half an acre at the front of the 80 acres, my parents set up what would be “home” for the next five decades. It was just a small 2-bedroom, 1-bath farmhouse, mostly run down, not enough space to grow their family of four into five when I came along six years later.

When I arrived, my parents opened up the attic and created a room for my sisters, and I took over the downstairs kids' bedroom.

After the divorce, my mom remodeled the 3-bedroom house time and again. One time she added a master bathroom. Then she added more living room space.

After a fire in 1997, she gutted the house and moved the kitchen to the east side of the house so each morning, the sun would glow through the windows and create a warm light to start the day. Mom enclosed an adjacent carport and created a large dining room a few years after the kitchen remodel.

The house today looks nothing like it did when I was a kid.

But still, it's the place where the world makes the most sense, where the sun sets low over the coastal range and the sky opens at the center of the valley.

It's home.

Ten miles from the nearest grocery store, an hour's ride on the school bus every morning and afternoon, a place where sleepovers lasted a week, and you could hear a car approaching from a quarter mile away.

There are no streetlights on Road 30.

We swam in the irrigation ditches to cool off in sweltering August days, and roamed through the field next door picking tiny ears of tender corn from stalks that grew far over our head.

We've had the same neighbor since we moved in 58 years ago.

I spent the first 27 years of my life here. Brought my first child home here.

Mom moved into town in 2013, but she held on to the ranch. She dreamed we would take it over, raising her grandchildren and great-grandchildren on the ranch. But it was not to be.

Mom's been gone more than three years now, and in 2022, with the catastrophic price of almonds, a hard freeze that took out any crop we may have had, and no one to take over the ranch, we decided it was time to sell. Late in the summer of 2023, with trucks loaded and trailers overfilled, we said goodbye one last time to the house that built us.

We had one last family dinner, one last swim in the pool, one last walk around the lemon and mandarin trees in the yard, one last out over the back 40 acres, which was the last set of trees my mom planted. She was so proud of those trees.

“Let's go for a walk in the orchard,” I can almost hear her say.

But there'll be no more walks in the orchard.

56 years. A lifetime or more. And still, not enough.