Ojai

Nobody had told me about the pink moment, so the first evening it caught me completely off guard. Lia and I were standing in the parking lot of a taco place, of all the unromantic places, when the light on the Topa Topa mountains to the east began to glow, first amber, then a deep improbable rose that spread across the whole ridgeline. All around us people had stopped what they were doing to watch. A woman getting into her car paused with the door open. It lasted maybe two minutes. Then it was gone, and the valley let out a breath. I understood then why people talk about Ojai the way they do.

The valley and its groves

Ojai sits in an east-west valley, unusual for California, which is part of why the light does what it does. The air smells of citrus and something greener underneath, and orange and avocado groves run right up to the edge of town. We spent a morning driving the small roads out toward the end of the valley, past olive trees and grazing horses and the odd hand-lettered stand selling honey and pixie tangerines, the tiny sweet ones the valley is famous for. Lia bought a bag and we ate them all before lunch, sticky-fingered, spitting pips out the car window on an empty road.

The arcade and the town

The town itself is tiny and deliberately unhurried. Its main street runs along a Spanish-style arcade with a bell tower, built in the 1910s by a man who wanted the whole town to look like a bit of old Spain, and it’s aged into something genuinely lovely. There’s a famous bookshop, Bart’s Books, that spills out into an open-air courtyard under the trees, shelves standing right in the garden, and we lost a good hour there in the shade. Ojai has long drawn people looking for something, spiritual seekers, artists, the philosopher Krishnamurti lived and taught here, and there’s a soft, slightly incense-scented earnestness to the place that could be silly but somehow isn’t.

Up the hill to the viewpoint

On our last afternoon we drove up to the Ojai Valley overlook on Dennison Grade, a pull-off on the road climbing out the east end, timed so we’d be there for sunset. Half the town seemed to have had the same idea; there were couples on car hoods and a man with a thermos of wine who offered us a cup. And then it happened again, the whole valley below us going gold and then that unearthly pink, the groves darkening, the mountains catching fire in slow motion. Lia didn’t say anything, just took my hand. It’s a small thing, a trick of geography and dust in the air, and it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in California.

Getting There

Ojai lies about 30 minutes inland from Ventura on the coast, up Highway 33 through the foothills; from Los Angeles it’s an easy hour and a half or so. Santa Barbara is roughly 45 minutes over the hills. There’s no train and barely any bus, so drive, and try to arrange your day so you’re somewhere with an eastward view of the Topa Topa mountains at sunset. That’s the whole point, really.