"The Loop"—the three and a half mile sidewalk paved behind Stanford—is especially crowded on sunday mornings.  Cars are parked on both sides of Stanford Ave often almost all the way to Peter Couts Road.  It’s couples pushing a stroller, or mothers gossiping, or headphoned middle-age men gasping for air; they all pass me coming and going.  I’m mostly here for the view (and to step briefly away from my dissertation).

But if you come here for any reason other than “the exercise” you’ll find that you are out of place.  It’s telling that the only location in Silicon Valley that has a clear sweeping view from San Francisco to San Jose should not have one bench or even a carved out place to sit and think it over.  No one stops on the sidewalk.  No one sits on the wooden fence or on the grass.  No one stays still longer than the time it takes to tie a shoe.  Entering ‘the loop’ is a commitment to keeping you body in motion for the duration.  I wonder if stopping up there isn’t implicitly looked upon as a sign of weakness.  Occasionally the grazing cows look over at the moving, speaking mothers.  Does this continuing flow of people give these cows a complex?

All kinds of animals are on the move up there: falcons, hawks, mountain lions, crows, squirrels, spiders, gophers.  All of them on the look out for each other, each one is another one’s dinner.  A falcon waits a few seconds before diving into the brush amidst a parade of circling exercisers. 

But this isn’t even the irony I wanted to point out.  I wanted to point out that in this ‘wildlife preserve’ the major attraction is the gigantic satellite dish intently aimed up at the heavens.  As one of the few local gathering places not embedded within a shopping district, the loop is the most fascinating place in Silicon Valley, and I’m predicting now that this is only the first of many posts on this subject.  But for now let’s add up what we’ve got going down in the foothills perched between Stanford and the 280.  One cement sidewalk providing the much-needed exercise for local laptop carriers; plus one sky filled with screeching red-tail hawks hungry on the hunt for nesting field-mice and squirrels; plus one twelve-story satellite dish imaginably receiving signals from a galaxy far, far away; minus any place to sit, relax, reflect, or lay down.  Equals:  La Piazza de Silicon Valley.