Farm Life in the Foothills of North San Diego County

Grazing horses, sea glass in my pockets, and the ghosts of the many lives I was foolish enough to live. That is the current inventory.

The foothills keep their own hours

North San Diego County, back off the coast highway, past where the tourists turn around. Dry hills the color of a lion in summer, green for about six weeks in spring, avocado groves stepping up the slopes in rows that look accidental until you notice they aren't. It is not dramatic country. It is patient country, which at this point in my life is exactly the right amount of scenery.

The day starts before I do. Horses first — the rhythmic crunch of grazing is, I have decided, the best sound in the natural world, better than surf, better than rain, because it is the sound of something enormous being completely satisfied. Then water, because everything out here is a negotiation with water. Then coffee, on a step, watching light come down the hill in one long slow wipe.

Quiet is a skill you have to relearn

I spent forty years in rooms that were loud on purpose. Kitchens at eight o'clock. Studios on deadline. A gondola with two engines bolted to it. When I first got out here I couldn't handle the silence — I'd put the radio on for company and then get irritated at the radio. It took the better part of a year to stop treating quiet as an absence and start treating it as a thing in itself.

He lives on a farm in the foothills of North San Diego County, surrounded by the rhythmic crunch of grazing horses and the ghosts of the many lives he was foolish enough to live.

Orchard anarchy, continued

I'd like to report that the place is tidy. It is not. There's a section of fence I've been meaning to address since an administration ago. The citrus does whatever it likes. A gopher and I are engaged in a conflict that neither of us can win and both of us have committed to. Grandma Leota Kay's coop was a state of orchard anarchy and it turns out that's inheritable.

But things grow. That's the part I underestimated. After a career spent producing images and services and experiences — things that exist beautifully for an evening and then don't — there is something almost unfair about the satisfaction of a tree that is simply a foot taller than it was last year, with no input from me beyond water and staying out of its way.

A truthful ending

This isn't retirement, exactly. I wrote a book out here, which is not a restful activity. But it's the first arrangement in my life I haven't been quietly planning an exit from, and I've thought a lot about why. I think it's because the farm doesn't require me to be interesting. It just requires me to show up before it gets hot.

The road that ends at this gate is the road I traced in A Beautiful, Chaotic, Leaky Symphony. This is where it lets out.