45 Minutes in Los Altos, CA

Downtown Los Altos is a small place. There are two busy streets, State and Main, and both are lined with neighborly cafes and beauty parlors. There is an ice cream shop. There is a pharmacy. There are two banks. When the hustle bustle of big city State and Main are too much to take, you can walk to the very end of the street, cross Foothill, and find the redwood grove on University.

Redwood Grove is magic. It's secrets and faded young adult novels found in city parks. You walk down a paved drive, and suddenly the suburbs fade away. Redwood planks form walkways through a compact forest of endless, tallest trees. The trees grow next to a creek where you can find thousands of blackberries in the summer. (It's best to roll up your pants and walk in the creek with a bucket to collect the blackberries. They taste wonderful in pancakes and muffins).

Everything is quiet here, except for one night a year. One night a year, kids who attend nature camp at the grove are invited to bring sleeping bags and snooze under the endless trees. When I was ten, I couldn't sleep on sleepover night. The trees were just too tall.