When people ask me where I live, telling them Santa Clarita, California, doesn’t help them much. Unless they’ve spent some time in the Los Angeles area, I’ll have to explain further. I can say, “Los Angeles,” and often do, but that conjures a variety of images unrelated to how we live.

I can tell people that my community is right on the Southeastern border of the Los Padres National Forest, but our forests don’t look like other forests. Sometimes I’ll pull out my phone and show them an image from Google Earth, just to illustrate. Even that doesn’t illustrate how beautiful this place can be.

I think from now on I’m just going to show them this post. This is a look down on my neighborhood, shot from a hill above my children’s elementary school.

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