Quickly — too quickly — the city thinned into seaside suburbia, with Pacific beaches at the ends of streets, then farmland littered with isolated housing developments, as we ran along the western flank of the Santa Cruz Mountains and turned left, 30 miles or so south of San Francisco, to climb into the hills.

On this moist side of the mountains, the forest had grown back as a thick pelt of green, with trees, close-packed and lush, overshadowing the narrow, twisting road: fir, pine, redwood, madrona, sycamore, maple and other species that I couldn’t name. It felt more gardened than wild, more arboretum than forest; nature conserved by reams of legislative small print. The road crested a ridge, and the trees cleared to disclose a wide-open view of Silicon Valley, 2,500 feet below; the country of young money, whose tycoons are much nearer to Julia’s age than to mine. Somewhere down in that low-rise, greeny gray slurry of built-over land, was the college.

Twenty minutes later, we were there. “You can afford to like it now,” I said. “You’re entitled.”

We sat out on the brick terrace of a bar-cafe near the center of the campus, looking out on our surroundings in quite different terms. Sipping a glass of rather bad red wine, I saw the place in long shot through a fisheye lens — broad, close-shaven lawns; palm trees; fountains; flame-colored roof tiles; pale pink stucco and buff stone; Spanish arches under the slanting sun. Julia — 7-Up untouched, wordless, unconsciously smiling — was raptly intent on the immediate foreground, the swarm of students on foot and on bikes, shouldering backpacks or with bookbags slung over their handlebars. I watched her watching them as if she could intuit her next four years from the flow of faces, T-shirts, shorts, dresses, sandals, as it swept past the terrace. I mentally planted her aboard a bicycle; she merged seamlessly into the crowd.

I’d booked a room at the place we stayed in October; a vintage motor-court motel on El Camino Real, Silicon Valley’s interminable Main Street. On a trip otherwise devoted to change and upheaval, it was good to be on familiar ground. Checking in, I greeted the manager as an old friend and took reminiscent pleasure even in the scent of cleaning fluid in our room, identical to the one we occupied five months before. We played at being creatures of habit: after supper at a restaurant we ate in twice the last time around, Julia stopped by the video store, and came back with a DVD of “The Birds.” Sprawled on twin king-size beds, we watched the movie. She found it scary and cheesy by turns; I just saw the malignant birds, lined up along the rooftops, waiting to visit my house.

At noon the next day, I dropped her off at the college quad and watched her walk away to meet her freshman host. Suddenly without purpose or direction, I drove along El Camino Real, where a single tall palm tree or telephone pole could still dominate the view. I lunched. I visited a bookstore. My daughter’s absence was a hollow hard to fill. Hours passed. I saw that the new adaptation of “Jane Eyre” was playing at a cinema just across from the motel, and for the first time in years I went to a movie in the afternoon. A life of desolation on the rainswept Yorkshire moors was a fine distraction, but it ended too soon, and I came out of the theater dazed by California sunshine and the prospect of more hours to fill. I ate at an Italian restaurant, thinking of Julia, then watched “The Birds” again.

Late the following morning, I picked her up from beside the quad. Her grin was uncontrollable as she got into the car, and her voice, usually measured, was a barely punctuated garble of names and details. Had I read Andrey Platonov’s “Foundation Pit” (she’d been to a class on it)? She met this kid who. . . . It was pledge night for boys trying to get into fraternities. . . . There was a picnic. . . . Everybody’s door was open. . . . They stayed up until after midnight, talking and singing. . . . She played a borrowed ukulele. . . . There was a boy who’d been a year ahead of her at elementary school in Seattle. . . . Everybody said. . . .

She’d picked up the slang and was talking ProFros and RoHos.

“I haven’t seen you like this since you were 7,” I said.