The Severed California Mountains

I remember being about four years old, sitting at a campfire with my family.

All I could notice was how bright and warm the campfire was, my slight hands, holding a skewered marshmallow, aglow.

Darkness painted the California valley, except for the smiling and elated faces of my family.

My mom guiding my hand to help me roast my first marshmallow, I belonged to something.

Roots.

Just a year later, my dad took me on a trip to visit Florida. Everyone else in my family stayed in California.

I remember walking on the white sand beaches, oh how incredible the soft sand was!

The soaring, empty blue sky layered across the green Emerald Coast waters.

I remember being delivered a vase of flowers that my mother paid for, and I struggled to lift the vase onto my small shelf.

Eventually my gentle hands found the strength, and now my shelf was adorned with a collection of beautiful white flowers.

Looking at my shelf, all I saw was my mom.

I never returned from that trip. And I was never allowed to speak to her or see her again.

Day after day, month after month, year after year, my father beat me.

Yet I never took the flowers down, even when nothing remained but ash.

As an adult I had the freedom to live with my family for about 6 months in 2021.

My aunt worked for an upscale dining restaurant, and she was a devout Christian.

She wore a sharpened cross.

"I'm scared of what she thinks of me", I told my mom.

"She has a soft spot for you."

And indeed these people, these strangers who called me family, had a soft spot for me.

They were so careful with how they interacted with me.

But not because they understood me, but because they were afraid to breach the edge of a snapshot.

I was simply who they could observe: a high achieving, educated, and quiet young man.

"Sometimes I see such anger in your eyes", my mom told me. But she never pushed further.

They never were able to see my essence, but I couldn't see the invisible either.

During that time, I lived in an RV. I slept in the bed, and my mom slept on the couch.

We had a beautiful bench outside the RV, stacked with rock towers that my mom collected from the Trinity River just a few feet away.

The summers of Trinity County were harsh, often reaching over 100 degrees beneath the sun’s judgment. The RV turned into an oven, so my grandmother would often visit as a reprieve.

We drove to Burger King sometimes, and often we would talk and laugh. Many days we would visit other family members as well.

I heard the tires of her Subaru crunching the gravel driveway early in the morning, and I excitedly opened the front door. I wanted to see her.

So I opened the front door.

"Gay people are an abomination", her first words and greeting.

She didn't know.

I was 19 years old that summer, equipped with the associate's degree that I earned before my high school diploma.

In the span of a month, I taught myself programming by building a small distributed system.

At this point, my mom and I lived in a real house, and above my desk was a board adorned with diagrams and flow charts.

I interviewed for a data engineering internship and I showed the interviewers pictures of my room.

I got the job, far away in Utah.

"I feel okay driving you to Utah, you'll be safe with the Mormons", my mom told me.

And before we left so I could move into a sleepy apartment in the Salt Lake Valley, I wrote my mom a heartfelt letter.

I wanted her to see the full human, not only the snapshot.

And so I spent a few days writing it.

I wanted her to know my struggles, that I love her deeply, that I need physical distance from the pressures of California to become a real human being after what I endured.

I signed it with love, and before we departed I left the letter under her pillow.

When she found it after she returned to California, she messaged me on Facebook her thoughts:

You win.

And then she blocked me.

And here I am, almost four years later. A successful software engineer, equipped with a sidekick cat who I adore.

I ended a relationship of three years at the start of 2025: the person who I thought I could trust was not safe.

And so I read philosophers and mystics voraciously, and I discovered that the only way for me to feel alive was to write.

Although physically isolated, these authors were my friends, companions, and enemies. They sharpened my soul, my mind, and my person.

I woke up just a few days ago, suddenly inspired to drive back to Trinity County.

So I booked a hotel room through Airbnb, and I left.

For what reason?

To witness.

On my trip, I found myself deep in Siskiyou county, slightly south of Etna. Etna is a small town nestled in a valley between towering mountains. One side painted yellow by grass long dead from the wrathful sun, the other lush emerald with magnificent pine trees.

As I drove, I noticed the most magnificent farm built near the yellow mountains.

Relics of the past were scattered across the farm: small wood shacks with chipped paint, manual tools strewn about, and rusted cars sitting isolated, probably long forgotten.

And yet there also existed large and hovering silos, incredibly expensive machinery, sprawling irrigation pipes, and a small but shiny Cessna plane.

I couldn't help but marvel that agriculture is a sector where technology has done incredible good rather than incredible harm. Long gone are the days of subsistence farming in the United States; a single farmer can produce massive yields with just a fraction of the labor and effort. What once required entire families now needs just an individual or two.

Yet I asked myself, "What is the future of farming in the United States?"

Now, the American farm finds itself in strange contradiction.

Arable land is prohibitively expensive, and, to make matters worse, the cost of both operations and living necessitates mechanized and industrial agriculture.

Setup alone can cost millions of dollars.

Likewise, the average American farmer is nearly 60 years old. There exists a deafening demographic crisis defined by an exodus of young people from rural counties, where arable land is often found, into cities.

There is hardly a job more important than that of a farmer for our society, but the olden farms whose output blossomed with innovation also decay today under the same scorching sun, merely a hundred years later.

American farms are within a valley, and their ascent is uncertain.

After a long drive through the valley, I found myself, now a 24 year old man, in a town last touched four years ago.

Small towns constantly move in subtle ways.

The charming bookstore I once visited with my brother had a sign that read:

CLOSED STARTING SEPTEMBER 20TH DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES

The cafe was filled with people, as I remembered. But what was once just typical booths and tables now had a bar that stretched across the walls.

The gallery that I always wanted to visit but only peered into its windows had new paintings hung on the shining walls.

I remembered my family, and I wondered what happened to them. Did my brother and his girlfriend live in the same home? Did my mom live in the same home on the hill?

And so I drove to where my brother used to live, but now strange trucks were scattered across the lawn. The same old, ratty, and blue Mercedes he drove was no longer there.

I drove out of town to the same house where my mom and I stayed at, just across the street from the RV.

I remembered how my mom decorated the home with string lights, pouring glitter onto the floor, plants about in the sunroom.

As I crept through the small street in the dark wilderness night in my small car, I finally arrived.

What was this feeling in my stomach?

I didn't feel like the 19 year old, trembling kid. But I didn't feel like the man I am today either.

Looking upwards to the hill where the house is perched over the street, what once shone life into the dark night was now silent, lost to time.

I decided to drive back into town, to the restauraunt my mom worked at.

"How sick it is that I am doing this for writing content", I remarked to myself in the car.

I felt unsettled. Something within me twisted and contorted.

What if I saw my mom?

What if she said, "Hi David"?

What would I say, other than "Hi, mom"?

I remember wondering on the drive, "If I place reduction of harm as the foundational premise of my life, but my presence causes my mom pain, then is the loving response to disapear?"

I never thought of a good answer.

Eventually I arrived.

"Hi David", I heard the first second I stepped foot into the Blue Creek Saloon.

The voice was familiar, and I turned my head to see Jen, my mom's coworker. I last saw her 4 years ago.

Today her skin was more cracked, her blond hair even more bleached. She looked more weary.

But her person and her soul remained untouched by time.

Men walked to and from the bar, often in flannel and wearing baseball caps. Some wearing camo, others in plain colors. What was once normal to me was now strange.

The same signs hung on nails, the same art on the walls. The same bar layout, the same workers.

Something about the bar was inexplicably painful. All that I could think was that somewhere within each dying and material finite thing of this saloon is love.

I paid my bill and drove to my hotel.

I remembered being tired, sitting at the room's old bed alone.

All I could notice was this feeling within me, the desire to truly witness how I felt of my family.

Uncertainty painted the walls of this hotel room, except for something steadfast within my heart.

My soul guiding my hand to create a new Facebook account, I searched the names of my family to see if I could sew roots again.

And, somehow, nothing.

I remember looking at their faces and the movements in their life, oh how incredible it was to see their growth! My brother engaged, his girlfriend a college graduate, both of them in a distant town.

I remember looking at my mom's different profiles, and I struggled to see any connection I had to her.

Eventually my steady soul found its strength, and I closed the app.

Looking at my family, all I saw were utter strangers.

Day after day, month after month, year after year, the person I used to be had changed.

And I suddenly realized that I am no longer him, and I share nothing with him.

What am I to you?