During these times of strife, many reside in places they call home. For me, home is a concept, not an actual place. Having spent the last five years moving around from house to house, state to state, the only place I would call “home” is where I spent around 10 years of my life. We no longer live here. My family has moved twice since 2014, and personally I have lived in three states since then, but this neighborhood is where my sister and I spent the best parts of our childhood.

Saratoga, where Parker Ranch is located was once all orchards. Before major industrialization took hold, the land was cultivated for fruit trees and vineyards. To this day there are still remnants of the agricultural life as some orchards have been preserved, though they are few and far between. The hillsides which back Park Ranch are filled with personal vineyards, which can only be assumed have been the case years before.

I use the term ‘neighborhood’ loosely. We only knew the elderly couple (who have since passed, may they rest in peace) and the couple that shared a fence line. They were the only houses you could really see if you stood on our driveway. Rather strangely, my family has had a habit of living at the end of streets, with only having neighbors on three sides only once (that only lasted maybe three years). This house, we call it the “Parker Ranch” because that was the street name and the general name of our area, was on a hill. We lived at the bottom of the Saratoga hills, thus our neighborhood was always a trek to walk. If you walk southwest, you have hilly terrain. Honestly, it felt more like the north due to the perpetual hills, but geographically it is southwest.

Walking north, down our hill, there is this little living complex, called ‘Seven Springs’. It was not gated as my family walked our dog there every day without any issues. This was a cookie-cutter neighborhood. There were little differences here and the, but it was clearly designed with continuity in mind. More often than not, my sister and I would tag along with my mom. We would be on our scooters as we thought walking was too much work. The entrance we always used was across the street from the elderly couple’s creek. I lived in a rather strange area where we had big properties, with parts often open to the public. Walking along the path, you will soon come across a rather funny looking cactus. My sister and I dubbed it the mermaid cactus because it looked like a mermaid. I have not been back to this area in some time and I wonder whether the cactus is still there. The sidewalk we would follow, made a circle so we rarely strayed from it. On occasion, we would venture out and find little playgrounds scattered here and there, but it was mainly just houses and streets. You could use this neighborhood as a cut-through to the larger roads. My mom, sister and I would sometimes bike around the area to the 7-11 a few miles away. One of the houses we passed all the time, on our walks, lived a beagle named Chili. We only knew the dog's name because my mom heard the owner call it one day. We could hear Chili all the way up to our hill while we were inside our house. Chili was rather loud. This also reminds me of the time when someone in this living complex had a rooster and we could also hear every sunrise.

Continue walking along the path, you pass a nice water pond feature. There were always nice flowers around it and the pond sometimes had ducks. One day I remember walking with my mom and sister and we saw two people trying to catch a duck. Well, that's what we thought as they were sitting by the water's edge with a cage. We did not question it. Walking around the pond you see a tennis court and a pool. Since we did not belong to his living complex we never used them. My house had a pool anyway and we had a tennis court in my neighborhood. A big area of green grass was next to the tennis courts. It was a nice area to play with dogs. Our dog was a little bichon so she really did not run around a lot, but there were sometimes other larger dogs we would see. My current dog (a labradoodle) would love it there. Unfortunately did not rescue him until after we left the area. There is not honestly much else in Seven Springs. It's a rather mundane looking area, with normal-looking houses. The worst part of coming down here was having to walk back up the hill to our house especially during the summer when the sun was strong and bright in the sky.

If you continue up our infamous hill and towards the southwest part of my area, you will pass by the only people we knew on the street. Large properties and a hilly area do not bode well to getting to know the people around you. At the corner of the elderly couple's property (the man was named Grover and he was well known in the area). Grover had his own farm on his property and would always donate his food. His wife, Betty, would always bring us fresh jam. His family had been in the area since its conception thus farming had stayed a major factor of life for them.

The corner of their property met another street, Burnett. This was the corner where my mom’s car got broken into one night when we were redoing our driveway. I don't remember much other than it happened on a rainy night as February was rather wet that year. If you take this off branching road, you can reach the area that connects to my neighborhood. It is more traveled as it is less hilly and there are less snobby rich people there. Near where my moms got broken into is a large mansion. It sat behind a wrought iron fence and was always empty. Well, it seemed empty. The landscape was always nicely done, but we never saw anyone there for the ten years we lived here. Beauchamps park is down there with the tennis courts. One summer my sister and I tried to learn tennis. It was futile and my sister and I are terrible at sports. There was also a nice playground where we would spend our time with a friend there. We often pretended it was a pirate ship and it was large and tall. The only other time we ever went down this way as if we walked to the shopping center not far from my house. You would need to take many backstreets that I no longer remember (except one named YOLO which my middle school friends and I thought was hilarious). By car, it was maybe 10 minutes, but walking it took us maybe 40 minutes.

Rather my family would just continue walking on our street. The houses would get progressively nicer as we walked up. If you walked far enough and through someone's yard—I always thought it was trespassing but we never got caught and my family would do it often—you could reach an actual trail. The trail connected to a state park, Fremont Older, which was a nice hiking area. Little development has occurred here as it has become a nice reserve. Preserved in the area are remnants of the Native American tribes who occupied this part of California. My specific area though shares no resemblance to what it may have looked like, thus people can only imagine. Continuing on the path, there was a big hill you could walk up and overlook part of the valley (Silicon Valley). Given the location, people had been able to watch the valley turn from agricultural land to a metropolitan epicenter within a few centuries. The mass amount of modern tech that has come from this area makes it hard to imagine what the region used to look like.

Now riddled with pollution, the views before industrialization took over must have been as clear as can be. As someone who is highly allergic to anything to do with nature, I rarely walked it. I used to gauge how dried out the soil was as it would often be brown for a majority of the year. According to my mom, one time when she was walking the path up with some friends, they came across a mountain lion. Obviously she is still here today, so nothing bad happened.

Mountain lions, coyotes, deer, bobcats were all common animal neighbors. I have had any personal vendettas against them. Except there was one night where my family came from dinner and on our neighbor’s lawn we saw a coyote with a rabbit in its mouth. That will forever be scary.

Well, back to the walking paths. If you did not trespass and continued on the sidewalk, eventually you reach the country club. My family never had any interest in it, so I have never been inside. I have only seen it on the outside, and it's mainly the golf course I saw. At certain cul-de-sacs, one can stop and just take in the scenery. The Saratoga hills eventually turn into the Santa Cruz Mountains, the rest of the valley lies beneath. Since we have left the area and learned to drive, my sister and I will occasionally drive up there just to take pictures. On clear days you can find buildings from downtown San Jose (where my first high school was located), though nowadays pollution tends to cover up the skyline. There are little streets that branch off here and there, most of the time they are just long courts and you cannot take them any place in particular. I always enjoyed just driving around the area with my family looking at all the fancy houses. Most of the area was old money, so we were never really bothered when we would stop and stare. It also smelled nice because many eucalyptus trees were planted in this area.

Most of my time spent in this neighborhood took place on our property. Though I can still adequately envision what the neighborhood was like. Since it has been years since I have actually lived there, there obviously are some changes I may not know about. Despite my unwillingness to actually give a place the label home, this would be the closest I ever had to a home.