America the Beautiful

It is such a pleasure, such a relief (and yes, I know, such a privilege) to be enveloped by warm feelings about my country. I don’t, of course, mean the current government. I don’t, of course, mean the heart-stopping (sometimes literally) inequities, the deep and damaging social issues that ruin lives and erode spirits.

I mean the geography. I mean the Petrified Forest with its mineralized, crystalline logs—blue, green, pink, orange—part of a striking desert landscape that used to be lush tropics. That was millions of years ago when all the continents were one land mass, Pangea, when Arizona was where Costa Rica is today. I mean the otherworldly formations of blue-gray bentonite clay, striated hillocks and mesas with eroded surfaces that look like elephant skin. I mean escarpments that rise from the flat scrublands and extend for miles. Rock outcroppings, arches, table-tops, cairns, canyons and cliffs. I mean pinon forests, juniper, Ponderosa pine. I mean 9,000-foot mountain passes and 12,000-foot mountains.

And I also mean the richness of cultures that live in these places: the silver-and-turquoise-jeweled arty types walking the streets of Santa Fe, the motorcycle-riding day drinkers in Madrid (pronounced MAY-drid), the New Agers soaking in Giggling Springs up at Jemez, the pick-up driving cowboys of Gallup—white, Hispanic, Native—in their straw hats and billed caps, the families—Native and Hispanic, the old people with their faces etched by sun and wind sitting beside grandchildren, great grandchildren.

This is the land that used to be Mexico. This is the land that used to be Navajo and Hopi, Zuni and Apache. And “we”—the U.S.A. of the 18th and 19th and 20th centuries—took it by force, by disease, by deceit, by political maneuverings. That is our history. That is our shame.

But it is also true that when you drive through this country, hike it, walk its main streets, eat at its diners, you can see how deeply and permanently embedded our diversity really is. The Navajo are here, 65,000 people strong. Almost fifty percent of New Mexicans are either descendants of Spanish colonists or recent immigrants from Hispanic America. For just a moment, let’s not talk about poverty here. Let’s revel in the beauty of geographic, cultural and racial diversity. There is a deep pleasure in experiencing it, in walking through it. Land and people.