California poppies around my Northern California neighborhood.
One of the many things I'm finding striking in my research about my home state of California, is how little I was taught about it in school. California history is fascinating. Its flora and fauna among the richest in North America.
The early contact between Europeans and native people, in this land so long isolated by the Pacific and the Sierras, had all the elements of a great drama. It was painful, sometimes humorous, always full of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, and ultimately tragic.
