It has been a full and rich summer, full of adventure and trying new
things, as well as taking it easy. Here’s
a taste of what I’ve been up to, as I discussed in a recent Claremont Courier
column. (I may not get back to regularly posting until next month. Or I may start now. We'll see! This is what's called covering ass.)
ON
THE ROAD, A NEW WINDOW ON CLAREMONT
It turned out that Emma was taking us the long way. What should have been a 17-minute trip ended
up taking 45 minutes. There were an
awful lot of right and left turns, coming one right after the other, and we
found ourselves driving one the same roads and the same highway several
times. After a while, Reginald joined in, but he basically gave the
same directions.
Not to worry, though. My two
friends and I had left early, so we were not late. Instead of being super early and perhaps
rude, we were right on time. What’s
more, all those right turns and left turns were quite lovely, bringing us down quiet
roads lined with beautiful trees and charming cottages or through golden fields
dotted with livestock and storybook barns.
Each turn was lovelier than the last, and seeing the same roads several
times was no problem.
Even the highway was attractive, more like a verdant main road rolling
over the hills than a state thoroughfare, easy on the eyes during our repeat
jaunts on it. But there was a problem –
we were lost. We had no idea how to get
to where we were going and were going around in circles. It was hard not to panic, especially with the
phones and their GPS guides, affectionally dubbed Emma and Reginald – he is a
bit more bossy, only giving directions without the street names (“Now turn
right.”)– losing their connection or running out of power.
It turns out, though, that Grass Valley and Nevada City, mashing up
almost seamlessly along Highway 49 in the rolling foothills northeast of Sacramento,
are an awfully nice place to get lost and go in circles and even panic in. For the last five or six years, I have been
going to Grass Valley in mid-July to attend and camp at a music festival at the
Nevada County Fairgrounds. But it has been many more years since I took time to
explore these “Gold Country” towns. And, ironically, I saw more of their
neighborhoods on this misguided outing.
That’s the best thing about trips – the unexpected ventures, when we see
things that people don’t usually see, even when they spend time on a
visit. That and meeting people and
making new friends. My friends and I
were enjoying both – we were on our way to visit someone I had met a week
earlier at a meeting in Marin County.
It just so happened that my friends and I would be attending the music
festival in Grass Valley. So we would be
in his neighborhood or in his neck of the woods, more or less literally, and
able to see him before heading back to Claremont via Lake Tahoe and
Bishop. These sorts of unexpected side
trips and stops are another bonus in traveling.
But another bonus in this side trip was how it provided another view of
Claremont. Yes, this little jaunt,
getting lost and driving in circles in Grass Valley and Nevada City, opened a
new window into our fair little city for me.
It made me appreciate Claremont even more and recognize how fair, how
attractive, how beautiful and lovely our little city is. We always like to say how wonderful and
unique Claremont is, but it turns out more and more that that’s more than
wishful thinking or civic pride.
As I learned not long before this trip and mentioned in my last column,
Claremont has been named by TheCultuTrip.com, a travel website, as one of the
10 most beautiful towns on the west coast.
That’s not all, though. In this
list, it is one of four – only four – towns in California, and the other four
includes, yes, Nevada City, as well as Cambria and Mendocino.
Think about it. Claremont is seen
by at least some to be as fair as fair and charming as these lovely getaway
spots. Is there any one of us who
wouldn’t jump at the chance to spend a week, a weekend, even a night in Cambria
or Mendocino? Most of us savor a day spent
in one of these idyllic burgs, especially when they’re aren’t so crowded. The same goes for Nevada City, though it may
not be as well-known.
So Claremont is now seen, or increasingly seen, as a charming,
picaresque town, a getaway spot right up there with Cambria and Mendocino and
the beautiful Gold Country. Is this surprising?
Is this a shock? Perhaps. It
certainly got a “wow!” out of me. But maybe it shouldn’t be.
After all, my last column – the one in which I mentioned the list on
TheCultureTrip.com – was all about how Claremont is like one big park, ideal
for a summer afternoon or evening respite. Not only are there an impressive
number of city parks, there are the colleges with all their park-like
acres. Even with the fading lawns in
this unprecedented summer of drought, they still offer a peaceful escape,
complete with their noted trees. Indeed,
Claremont’s trees and urban forest was a major factor in the website’s
citation.
And indeed, there are plenty of stories about people getting out and
enjoying Claremont and its urban forest, not to mention its cultural
opportunities and its unique shops and restaurants. In the same edition of the COURIER, there was
not only an article about another new restaurant in town; there was a feature
about the Claremont Senior Bicycle Group.
Sponsored by the super-active Claremont Senior Program – yet another
stand-out in this community – the group plans and leads regular weekly rides on
our pleasant streets. Longer rides further afield are also on the schedule,
but, as Angela Bailey points out in the article, “There is no better place to
be a cyclist than the City of Trees. With over 30 linear miles of bicycle
infrastructure and organizations geared towards all ages and cycling skill
levels, Claremont – which has been designated as a bike-friendly city by the
League of American Cyclists – is a haven for cyclists.”
What’s more, it turns out that, with all our trees, this is actually a
healthier town. According to a study published in Scientific Reports analyzing
two sets of data from Toronto, adding ten trees to a street can make a resident
feel seven years younger. Furthermore, the study found also that residents on
streets with a higher density of trees are less likely to have cardio-metabolic
conditions such as hyper-tension, obesity and diabetes.
“Trees remove pollutants from the air, so it could be the cleaner air,
or it could be that adding more trees on a street encourages people to get outside
and exercise more,” said Marc Berman, director of the Environmental
Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Chicago and the senior author of
the paper. “Or it could be that the
environment is more beautiful, and that contributes to health.”
We should be pretty darn healthy here with more than 24,000 trees. That’s right, there are over 24,000 trees in
Claremont, and, in a project carried out by students in Pomona College
professor Char Miller’s Environmental Analysis 190 class, they are all “mapped”
online. For information on any of the
trees lining Claremont’s streets or in its parks and other public places, visit
http://claremontsurbanarboretum.
I wonder if Nevada City can beat that.
