Upon their return to Colorado from a two week East Coast excursion (meeting us in Hilton Head towards the beginning) my mother told me what a great trip they had, and how it had almost felt like visiting a different country, with all the different, foods, accents, and environments.
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| Southeastern Kentucky. So not Western Oklahoma. |
It sounded silly when she said it, and I would have laughed, had I not just commented, two days before, when we arrived in Kansas City, in a hot haze over 100 degrees with a furnace blasting south wind and bad traffic, that it felt like home. It wasn't just that the Mister was not alone in his Royals cap and Jayhawk shirt, it was that until then, from the first lunch in Fort Smith, it felt like we were somewhere
else, someplace exotic, someplace vaguely foreign. Grits and green tomato country covered by lots and lots of trees.*
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| South Carolina Swamp. Also not Western Oklahoma. |
Wandering around the town in West Virginia where I lived for four years didn't feel like a homecoming (except when seeing friends) and I kept muttering, "We used to live here? It's so green. And so steep and so not like the places I live." But I did live there.
When I returned to Western Oklahoma there was a similar sense of confusion, "Really?
This is where I live?" (and I never lived in Kansas City, which felt so home-like). But my cat was here, and our house with its problems and lots of lots of zucchini and yep, I was back where I belong.
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| Central Kansas in May. Not Western Oklahoma as well. |
It's hard to explain the diversity of the US to people outside of it. Its hard for me to fathom and I've driven huge swaths of it. It's a pretty incredible place in so many ways. So here is my annual celebration of the diversity of this country, and the greatness that can be found across it. Happy Birthday US of A! With all of you're flaws, you are my home, and for that I am glad.
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| The Captains say, "Happy Birthday USA!" |
*Anyone who complains that driving the interstate across Kansas is the most boring driving around hasn't driven the interstate across Georgia, flanked by plantation pines and nothing else for hundreds of miles.
2015 Americana Cheese photo
here and 2014
here.
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2 comments:
Well said, dear Lisa, and Happy 4th to everyone.
The comment on the hiways in the SE is spot on. I actually pulled off a couple of times and drove back in the woods---I thought possibly they were just along the road--but no, they go on for miles and miles, they're everywhere and, yes, they do get boring.
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