Santa Clara, Calif.

When I was first asked to accept a technical writing contract in Santa Clara, California, I wasn’t too excited. I had visited California a few years earlier, staying with friends in Fremont. I had a wonderful time, visiting all the famous tourist spots like Hollywood and Disneyland in Southern California, the fabulous waterfalls and forests of Yosemite National Park, and the old Spanish-style seaside towns of Monterey and Carmel. I had a fabulous time but I really didn’t want to go back.

I had just started a master’s degree at UCD in Ireland, so the money from such a contract would be great, but the inconvenience of taking ten days off to travel halfway around the world seemed to outweigh the benefits. After much soul searching, I decided to give it a try. If the contract turned out to be too difficult, since he had never worked as a technical writer before, he really had nothing to lose. So on October 19, 2000, I left for Santa Clara, without guessing what fate had in store for me.

Twenty-four hours after arriving in Santa Clara, life had suddenly changed dramatically. He was booked into an apartment in Milpitas. I was given my own cubicle in a huge building owned by Nortel, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies, and introduced to the team I would be working with. One of the members of this team was Bob, a dazzling, bubbly and very likeable guy who loved the outdoors and had a passion for Irish art, literature and culture. We immediately became friends. We spent the most wonderful ten days touring the Bay Area, dining at exotic restaurants in Palo Alto and San Jose, walking the glorious beach at Seascape, browsing great libraries and bookstores, shopping for long tie-dyed dresses at Capitola, and even getting to see to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young at the Shoreline Theatre.

When the ten days were up I didn’t want to leave. I promised to come back for Christmas. Bob made plans to visit me in Ireland. So for a few months life became a frantic whirlwind traveling between two continents. I quickly began to fall under the spell of the true spirit of California. I had always imagined it as a sunny paradise for artists and hippies, for movie stars and revolutionaries. It was certainly the scene of a social revolution in the 1960s. I had never realized the extent of its incredible natural beauty: the thousands of acres of stunning forests and hills that have been designated as parks throughout the state; the miles of glorious beaches scattered along the entire west coast; the variety of towns and cities, from gold rush settlements to sprawling Spanish missions and iconic cities.

Of course, Santa Clara is in the center of Silicon Valley, known for its high-tech industry, where work is brutally competitive and perfectionist standards are largely prevalent. I got a work visa and worked at several of these companies doing contract work. IT workers are generally well paid, but many long hours are expected in return, and no matter how much effort you put into your job, you can still be fired without so much as a handshake at any time. Then there were other harsh realities of life that struck me: the application of the barbaric death penalty, the number of homeless people particularly in San Francisco, the often callous attitude that associated poverty with weakness or laziness, the high smog levels from traffic congestion and industrial fumes and hugely inflated housing and rent prices forcing most people to eventually settle elsewhere in the US.

Despite its social problems, Santa Clara County contains some of the most interesting towns and beautiful parks in the Bay Area. There’s the small Asian town of Mountain View with its incredible variety of restaurants; the city of San José with its old art deco hotels and Spanish-style buildings; Los Gatos with its charming antique and designer shops; Saratoga, a charming old town at the foot of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Some of the amazing parks I have visited include Uvas Canyon Forest, Big Basin State Park, Sanborn Skyline Park, Henry Coe State Park, and Coyote Lake in Mount Hamilton.

The town of Santa Clara is the main administrative center of the area. The most beautiful buildings are the university and the mission. Throughout California there were twenty-one missions established by the Franciscan order from 1769 onward. The areas where the missions were built gradually developed into major towns and cities. This was also how the town of Santa Clara began to flourish.

For three years I lived with Bob and his four adorable cats in their apartment in Lick Mill, east of Santa Clara, in the Lick Mansion Historic Site. James Lick was one of the richest men in America in the mid-19th century and built a fabulous mansion and mill, both of which are still in pristine condition. Every day he took a walk through the Ulistac Natural Area, formerly inhabited by the Ohlone Indians. He often daydreamed about what it must have been like to live in Santa Clara, long before a white person set foot in its sacred forests, hills and beaches.

During those years I took many incredible trips with Bob, to towns like Mountain View and Santa Cruz, to the cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento, to magnificent beaches, forests, deserts and mountains of incredible beauty. Santa Cruz became my favorite place, with its wonderful bookstores, great cafes, and quirky locals. I attended meditation centers in Redwood City and Mountain View, and also took a bookbinding class. There was always plenty to do, from watching old movies in big movie theaters to hiking in the mountains or surfing at Seascape.

We travel the length and breadth of California’s diverse landscape: snow-capped mountains en route to Lake Tahoe; lush fall vineyards in Napa and Sonoma; magical redwoods in Santa Cruz and giant sequoias in Yosemite; the splendor of the Pacific Ocean in summer; the arid desert of the Mojave Desert in winter, where there is little to break the monotony of the scorched earth except for the lone Joshua tree. Sometimes we’d cruise the back roads of the Santa Cruz Mountains in Bob’s teal blue miata, taking in the sumptuous views under turquoise skies and glittering blankets of stars. On longer trips, we took Bob’s truck. Then we would often pull off the road and rest for a few hours before resuming our travels.