Family walk at Point Isabel this evening, an insanely beautiful dog park that I’ve probably written about a bunch of times before. Still, every time we go I can’t believe how beautiful it is, and still can’t believe that it’s a ten minute drive from our house, nor that it’s right next to... Costco.

If you stand in one spot and spin all the way around you’ll see the Berkeley Hills, the freeway, Marin, the Golden Gate Bridge, the San Francisco skyline, the Bay Bridge, the Berkeley waterfront, and huge shipping containers being carted off who-knows-where. The weird juxtaposition that is America, in all of its beauty and garishness.

I try not to take any photos, but inevitably the sight of the shimmering water and that famous bridge in the distance compels me to, as it does everyone else. You stand and take minute-long videos that you’ll never post but that you need to record, because the sea and the sky and the mountains demand to be captured. We capture them, then.

Forever grateful to live amongst beauty like this. To see our goofy dog frolic through the grass with a backdrop of the setting sun. To walk hand in hand, slowly, and talk about our good fortune. If nothing else, give me a beautiful place to exist and the good health to enjoy it.