When I first visited the Bay Area, I can’t say I fell in love with it. We were 19, traveling cross-country during the summer, Vinny and Judy in their pickup truck with a camper top Vinny built, Bob and me in Bob’s bright yellow VW Beetle.

While staying overnight with a friend in the Haight, thieves helped themselves to the CD player and camera we left on the backseat (OK, that was stupid), and overturned our cooler, soaking the backseat and floor. As we sat there, totally bummed about the city the Mamas & the Papas promised us would be filled with “gentle people with flowers in their hair,” a man approached the car and threw hundreds of colored rubber bands into the window, as he screamed, “Go back home to Naziland, you Nazis.”

A decade later, I moved here anyway. That’s what falling in love will do, at first with the man who lived here and then with my state. And in the decades that I have been in love with California — much longer than the man — I never gave even a second’s thought about living any other place. A few months in France or Spain or Portugal in retirement, sure. But for good? Never.

Until now.

Apparently, I’m not alone. There’s chatter on Facebook and groups forming on Nextdoor asking neighbors where they might be thinking of moving to. A new study indicates that nearly half of Californians who can work from home are thinking of splitting the Golden State.

Of course, lots of people have been leaving California in recent years anyway, tired of the traffic, the homelessness, the ridiculously high cost of living. Many went to Oregon, but our neighboring state no longer seems like a safe haven.

For a long time, my only fear living here was the Big One that is sure to hit us one day. Now? An earthquake, even a massive temblor, feels somewhat doable. Unbearable heat; earlier, bigger and more-frequent wildfires; toxic air that last week turned an apocalyptic orange; power shutoffs; having a to-go bag ready at all times — California’s new reality is starting to not feel so doable.

It feels overwhelming.

The California Dream has become more of a never-ending nightmare.

Still, even with a pandemic raging, there was always the outdoors — in my mind, the only reason to pay the big bucks to live in Marin. A walk in the hood, a hike to the beach or on Mount Tam, a drive to West Marin or farther to go camping when we could — being in nature soothed some of the anxiety and isolation brought on by months of lockdown.

And then the air became dangerously unbreathable, thanks to the fires, and we are forced back inside, where I’ve had lots of time to mull over a question I find myself asking myself more and more — how many more years of this can I handle? And if I can’t handle it, where will I go?

The rest of the world won’t even let us in now, so there goes my fantasy of marrying my Irish friend just so I can live overseas if the election doesn’t go the way it must if we have any hope of getting a handle on climate change.

I have friends in Colorado and D.C. and a son in Atlanta, although the South hardly seems like the place to head to as we grapple with an ever-warming climate. One friend is trying to convince me that Providence, Rhode Island, is a good place to live while another is chatting up the artsy community in Charlotte, North Carolina.

But when I look at what’s ahead for those states — any state, actually — there’s nothing promising. Flooding, excessive heat, hurricanes, wildfires, drought — pick your poison. Because there’s no place to escape climate change.

If you’re trying to avoid excessive heat, the options are pretty limited, geography professor Camilo Mora says. It basically comes down to one state, Alaska. It’s going to be the next Florida by the end of the century, he predicts.

I lived in Florida. I don’t want to live in Florida.

For the first time in my life, I feel trapped.

Perhaps this is the price we must pay for not taking seriously enough the environmental crisis we’ve been aware of since the first Earth Day, since we first saw our beautiful but fragile planet from space, and for our lifestyle choices and our political choices. Now we are at a tipping point.

Since we can’t go anywhere anyway, maybe we can finally do the right thing for our home, California, and our planet. Make it a fairer, better, affordable, healthier and just place for everyone. Because if we can fight for that, all of us just may be able to breath easier — even when the next wildfires come.

Vicki Larson’s So It Goes column runs every other week. Contact her at vlarson@marinij.com and follow her on Twitter at OMG Chronicles