Flying out of Newark the other day, I got one of those perfect IG-friendly aerial shots of New York City. Lower Manhattan was in shadow, but Lady Liberty was bathed in glorious sunlight, and as cheesy as it sounds, I got misty about all that she still represents. She stood watch when my Hungarian mother arrived as an infant; last year my half-Korean daughter, whose own mother also came to America as a child, visited Ellis Island on a school trip and was so proud to find her grandmother’s name among the digitized immigration records. The plane continued over the Bronx, and I imagined the rest of America splayed out in miniature, like Saul Steinberg’s View of the World From 9th Avenue, and I thought about how much I love this beautiful, fractured country, in spite of everything. The Fourth of July is upon us, so let me count the ways. An incomplete list:
I love the sound of singing insects on a hot, close night in South Carolina. I love driving with the top down in Florida in winter. I love a hippie farmers market in Vermont. I love roadside chili in eastern Kentucky, beignets dusted in powdered sugar in New Orleans, fragrant lobster rolls in Maine, and hot dogs with an entire garden on top in Chicago. I love the early Louis Sullivan skyscrapers of Chicago, which—apologies to New York—has always seemed to me like the quintessential American city. I love how New Yorkers relish any chance to give directions to an out-of-towner. I love a long weekend in an under-appreciated midsize city. (Ask for my picks in Cleveland or Chattanooga!) I love American cities’ knack for self-reinvention. I love the surreal shadows the grain silos of Kansas throw across the flat, golden landscape, like a de Chirico painting. I love Minnesota‘s lakes, and I love Crater Lake, the Finger Lakes, Lake George, and the Great Lakes. I love all of our purple mountains, particularly the ones I grew up with, the Sierras and the Cascades, and the ones I visit now, the Catskills and the Berkshires. I love the geology of the West, especially the phallic hoodoos of New Mexico. I love the cathedral light of the California redwoods. I love the primeval vibe of the Hawaiian Islands, and I also love Americans’ capacity to band together to solve their problems when their institutions fail them.
This land is my land. This land is your land. Only, this land doesn’t really belong to any of us, of course, unless you’re someone who can trace your ancestry here back a half a millennium or more. So let’s remember always to treat all who would come to this country, whatever their reasons, with grace and dignity, and to respect the treasures of this miraculous place for the gifts they are.
This article appeared in the July/August 2024 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here
