PORTLAND, Ore. — The last time Natalia Kuikka lived in the United States, it was hot. Really hot, and really hot wherever she went. For the most part, where she went was Tallahassee, the Florida capital located at the east end of that state’s long, trademark panhandle. She was at Florida State University from 2015 to 2019. For one summer, though, she lived at the edge of Los Angeles, at the point where L.A. stops being L.A. and you start climbing the mountains into the Central Valley John Steinbeck wrote about.
“It was a really nice area,” one of the newest Portland Thorns remembers about Santa Clarita in 2017.