My campus is located in central Northern California, in Stockton. It boasts a high crime rate and nationally recognized high foreclosure rate. It is consistently considered as among the most miserable places to live in the country.
However, in this hellhole of a city, there is a fairly isolated paradise.
I have yet to find it, since I'm stuck on campus.
Regardless, within the confines of my university's campus, there are numerous trees. In fact, just recently as I was driving on an overpass into the city, I got a good view of the skyline. I was pleasantly surprised and impressed to find that the city is extremely green. There were trees as far as I could see, which I thought was wonderful not for the environment but rather, for the pure aesthetics of the city.
Anyways, within this city is our campus, and our campus itself can claim ownership to hundreds of trees. Small as the University of the Pacific's campus is, its tree to area ratio is higher than most campuses I've visited.
Among the trees on campus is the redwood tree. Some know them as sequoias, but redwoods are a bit more distinct than the typical sequoia, even though they are in the same family. Sequoias are the largest trees on average, but redwoods are the species with the tallest trees right now.
But it isn't their height that makes the redwoods my favorite trees. It is their location. Redwoods only grow in coastal Northern California and a tiny bit in Oregon. They do not grow anywhere else in the world.
And in our humble campus, there is a copse of redwoods trees upon a forested foundation, with a few picnic tables and a large statue Mobius Strip statue, about three times the size of an average person. At first glance, this copse may seem random, and admittedly, in the context of the rest of the campus, the basketball court-sized area is strangely contrasting when juxtaposed with the rest of campus.
However, it is my favorite area on campus. All around it people walk by, and it's almost as if no one really sees it, like an isolated area within an isolated area. And these trees are as high-reaching as any trees can be.
A lot of our campus has gone through renovation. The lamps all have a certain look to them. The other day, though, as I walked by this particular copse of trees, I noticed that the two lamps there were different.
They were much more old-fashioned, and their light had a yellow glow, as opposed to the more "modern" white glow of the other lamps. I am certain that these two lamps are the only ones of their kind on campus, and there are dozens and dozens of lamps on campus.
It just further made this area unique to me, and along with the redwood trees, is just one more reason why Northern California will always be better than Southern California.
(Also, on the back of our state quarter is John Muir and Yosemite Valley, not SoCal beaches. So suck it, SoCal bitches.)
