Last week Andrew and I flew
out west to explore national parks in Utah with my parents and siblings
and then join my mom’s extended family in Colorado for a reunion. Late Sunday
night we got back. I am always amazed at the change that comes with leaving the
city and coming back.
We flew into Las Vegas and stayed just long enough to drive down the Strip and see the character and fundamental unprincipledness of luxury. (I had not thought about this since I read novels about ancient Rome.) From there we drove to the Hoover Dam and tried to stop our knees from shaking while gaping at the size and mass of the dam, and the intestinal fortitude of its builders.
In Utah we spent hours
slogging upriver in a beautiful canyon at Zion National Park, leaning
on walking sticks and climbing up the sandstone in places where it had been
worn away. We ate late at the Mexican and Chinese restaurants in Hurricane, at
that phase of exhaustion when everything satisfies. We watched
the sun set and then rise at Dead Horse Point State Park, in vast and complete
silence broken only by the wind. We drove through
Canyonlands and Arches National Park and saw canyons within
canyons, layers upon layers, red cliffs of sandstone, green hillsides of
uranium oxide, and the most astonishing, fantastic, gigantic pillars and arches
of rock you can imagine. I think Arches might be the most mysterious place on this continent.
We camped in the desert, talked to rangers, stayed with a Westerner and his
horse and dogs. I've never seen stars twinkle like
they did over Hurricane.
In Colorado we watched the elevation numbers on the GPS escalate as we
approached the Continental Divide. The
family were delighted to hear everyone’s news, and large-group games kept us busy between mealtimes--where the cafeteria had the biggest drink
selection I’ve yet enjoyed. On Sunday we spent a solid hour singing hymns in
four-part harmony, in the proud, understated Mennonite tradition.
Coming back after that experience of awe and love brought my focus again to something I have not figured out about city life.
People come to New York to find themselves, be free of small-town expectations
and restrictions, and in some sense see the world. But whenever I come [back] to New York,
I feel like I'm stepping into a box. For a few hours—a few days if I’m lucky—I
approach people without preconceptions, as an individual. But the
hackneyed truisms set in quickly: racial identities, neighborhood stereotypes, the
New Yorker’s prying curiosity about everyone else’s income, white guilt, Midwestern
insecurity. I start thinking like the New
York Times, even though I’m both conservative and religious—thinking about
people as categories rather than individuals with relationships. It desiccates
my imagination, and I start filling up my schedule with weekend things to
create islands of oasis or distraction from the isolation that surrounds my
mind.
Why is it that in the city
of tolerance I see only divisions? Why is it that close proximity to every
stripe of humanity pushes me into isolation? Am I the only one who
experiences this—my heart minimizing like a computer window when I come back to
the city? What have others found to do about it?
This is what I think about when I return.
