If you haven't heard, you may be forgiven for not knowing President Obama is on vacation in Martha's Vineyard at the moment, because it's neither newsworthy nor surprising. Whether you invoke the "elitist" card or not, Obama is a rich, progressive liberal, and everyone knows rich, progressive liberals like to vacation on exclusive New England beaches, among other posh locations. (And at $20 million, the resort the Obamas picked had better qualify as posh.)
What is worth noting is the token, middle-America destination Obama chose to breeze through prior to his real vacation in order to head off those inevitable charges of elitism and snobbery. As a sort of footnote to several "townhall" meetings in western states to discuss the inescapable health care debate, the first family made a quick stopover in the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone national parks. Quoth the LA Times:
"He'll spend the last week of August at a $20-million estate in one of the most private spots on the Vineyard. But this weekend, he'll balance out the imagery with a visit to Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Canyon."
Normally I might not even take note of the POTUS' comings and goings, but as it happens, I just spent the last week in one of those non-elite vacation spots: Yellowstone National Park, and its sister, Grand Teton. And having returned suffused with admiration and love for the natural splendor that is Yellowstone, I can't help bristling at the notion that the supposed leader of this country regards the 2,900 miles between the coasts as little more than a good photo op before his "real" vacation.
Now, I have nothing against Martha's Vineyard, which I've never visited. I have no doubt it's a lovely beach, as are most of the beaches between Maine and Florida. But no one goes to the Vineyard for surf and sun, which are available elsewhere for cheaper; they go because they can go, because they can afford tens of thousands of dollars for a week in the high season, or because they can afford tens of millions of dollars for some of the country's most sought-after real estate. They go to be amongst like-minded folk, mostly celebrities and movie stars and other millionaires.
You most definitely do not go to Yellowstone for those reasons. You go there to experience the last great unspoiled temperate wilderness left on earth. You go to see grizzly bears and bison and other beasts that once roamed a whole continent but have since retreated to this last holdout. You go to see glacier-crowned mountains that jut a mile and a half straight up into a clear, unpolluted blue sky. Martha's Vineyard, I imagine, makes you feel special; Yellowstone, I know, makes you feel lucky.
But after a brief lifetime of traveling west to places like Yellowstone at every opportunity, I've realized not many of my east-coast ilk share that feeling. I grew up outside New York City, and I now reside outside Washington, and I've known more than my share of smart, affluent, worldly people. I went to school with them, and I work with them. And almost without exception, nobody ever understood my desire to see America west of the Appalachians. Kids I knew who went out west did so to ski because the snow was good, and that was about it. A few social studies teachers seemed pleasantly surprised I'd been to some of the places in our textbook.
The adults I work with now mostly express a certain enthusiasm that I just spent a week in Wyoming, but with one exception, they yearn to lounge at the beach or cavort through bohemian Europe. When the Cosmopolitan in Chief jets off to Manhattan or Paris for "date night" with his First Lady, they gush in approval tinged with envy.
So it was difficult for me, taking in a sweeping Wyoming vista or learning about the rich, bloody, tragic history of the west at the (incredibly good) Buffalo Bill museum in Cody, to consider how little so many Americans care to explore their own patrimony and past. Between the coasts lies a whole continent, as diverse and awesome as any other, ranging from burning desert, to old-growth rain forest, to rolling savannah, to ice-capped mountain ranges.
And within that array of landscapes, a thousand different human cultures lived and died over the course of a hundred centuries, culminating in a final blaze of glory and cruelty and sadness when a European culture arrived like a landslide and wiped them all out. William "Buffalo Bill" Cody played a starring role in that fleeting moment of history between 1865 and 1885 or so, when whites warred with Indians on the Great Plains, and no lesser personage than a prince of Imperial Russia traveled halfway around the world to witness Cody's performance in a wild, unique human drama that will never come again.
When the frontiers were closed, and the wars all settled in favor of white America, Cody, that slaughterer of the buffalo herds and rare friend of many Indian tribes, took his Wild West shows to civilized, worldly Europe, for what now seems like an amazing purpose: to satisfy the veracious desire of Europeans to experience the Old West, as presented by the man most singly responsible for bringing it to an end. Can you imagine, in the year 2009, European audiences, from kings and queens and prime ministers on down, paying good money to experience American culture? For that matter, do the coastal Americans who all too often eschew the interior of their country in favor of foreign lands even acknowledge such a thing as "American culture?" Isn't it all just flyover country full of Wal-Marts and strip malls and rednecks?
Perhaps I shouldn't complain that more easterners don't go west. After all, certain parking lots in Yellowstone were already sufficiently crowded with RVs bearing licence plates from Utah and Minnesota and Alabama that the charm of the place was threatened. But the west is vast, above all else. There's room to spare, discoveries to make, history to feel and freedom to roam: the same qualities that brought settlers there in the first place.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I know I'll be back.
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4 comments:
Heya. Happy to be the exception. Wonderful post, Jimp. However, I would say that elitism isn't the only reason many Americans don't visit Yellowstone. A lot of people, from all demographics and classes, have a startling lack of curiosity about history and direct experience in the real--as opposed to the virtual--world. Interestingly enough, I think that may be one way in which some foreign cultures are different than ours. Some, like the Australians and New Zealand-ers, have a rugged pioneer vibe in their blood. Sometimes, I think they are more "American" than we are. And many Europeans, blessed as the are with much more vacation time than we get, do explore our land with genuine wonder. I would venture that they know much more about us than we know about them.
That's true about the Europeans. We saw lots of Germans and French people out there. I guess they're pretty into the outdoorsy scene.
And you're probably right about the larger lack-of-curiosity issue. I guess I'm just more apt to forgive those people than the ones who consciously avoid worthwhile places because they don't have the right cachet.
As someone who works in NYC and commutes from NJ, I can say that people who grew up in the city think NJ is the boonies, even those rich, Morris County towns like Short Hills or Summit. Now those people in those rich NJ towns in turn think towns west of them are the boonies (i.e. Randolph, Rockaway, Budd Lake). And of course those people in those west Jersey towns think anything in PA is completely in the boonies. You see a pattern.
With more and more of the population being confined to "metropolitan" areas, I see your problem in this posting only growing. Cities are where the jobs, culture, and social scenes are so why would I risk going west of the Delaware River to enjoy a few pretty sights?
I agree with your sentiment because my family always used to schlep me and my three siblings across the country for month-long road trips. I've driven to Colorado and back about 5-6 times now (always coming back a different way) so I've seen so much of what the country has to offer. Wanna know how big the west really is? After all those trips, I still feel I've only seen a small fraction of what the west has to offer.
Yeah, I know what you mean. We drove from NJ to Montana and back one summer, and put a few thousand miles on rental cars on other trips. But if I could somehow create a map of the country with lines representing the ground I've actually covered, it would account for about .001 percent of the total. Maybe some people are just afraid of that sort of vastness, but personally, I find it exciting.
And that's totally true about New Jersey people thinking of Pennsylvania as the hinterlands. That hasn't been the reality for about two hundred years, but it's in the opposite direction of New York City, so it MUST be a wasteland.
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