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O Beautiful
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O beautiful, for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.
O beautiful, for pilgrim feet
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America! God mend thine ev’ry flaw;
Confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law!
O beautiful, for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America! May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness, and ev’ry gain divine!
O beautiful, for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years,
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea!
- Katharine Lee Bates, 1893
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Well over 100 years ago the young English teacher Katharine Lee Bates was inspired enough by her cross-country train trip to write those words about what she saw and hoped for in America. In my own beautiful wandering years I made several driving trips across the country, and I know first hand the awe she felt when leaving the sheltered east and heading out west across the sprawling miles. What an incredible land this is! The sheer scale of it is surprising if you have never passed across it before. The wide variety of climates, ecosystems, animals, and people is something that must be experienced to be truly believed.
When I think back to those trips, a collage of images tumbles into the front of my mind:
The swampy plains of Memphis and Arkansas; the patchwork highways, the cotton fields steeped in hot morning mist.
Fields of bluebells, brilliant indigo waving in the north Texas breeze.
Endless Kansas wheat fields, golden to the blue horizon as far as the eye could see.
Wind blowing over the stones of the Puerco Ruins in Arizona.
The dusky purple shadows of sunset in the Grand Canyon, a sight which completely silenced even the noisiest group of tourists.
A sudden snowstorm in July up near Raton Pass on the southern Colorado border.
Sunset while driving across the glowing white expanse of the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
Waking up to watch the sun rise over the mountains near Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Endless lonely stretches of golden hills in south central California, and tiny towns with names like “Lost Hills,” “Bitter Water” and “Devil’s Den.”
Sitting under the tall pines of Jack’s Peak over Monterey, California, and watching sailboats on the bay below - - tiny white butterflies floating across a deep blue pond.
The thunder of waves at rocky Asilomar Beach - - feeling the delicate flutter of air from passing gulls overhead.
And of course, a brilliant evening of fireworks over the Washington Monument in Washington, DC that I will never forget.
In those days when cell phones were not so common, I traveled (usually by myself) with no outside communication. Eventually I carried a CB radio. It was only in my later trips across the U.S. that I kept a cell phone for emergencies. I recall times driving, especially across the desert southwest, when there would not be another set of headlights from horizon to horizon. Oddly enough, no matter how desolate the place, I never felt alone - - whether from “immortal youth” or some more metaphysical reason I could not now say.
Traveling enough times, however, eventually brought the odds of mishap my way. At those times, I had the privilege of seeing first-hand just how incredible people can be when helping a traveler in need. I have a whole collection of memories of kind folks across the country lending me a hand, perhaps culminating in one particular week out in Tucumcari, New Mexico, where I had to stop for repairs to a badly cracked windshield. This is not an auto part normally kept on hand out in this tiny town in the desert, and it would require a day or two to get it in from the city. The only repair shop in town was run by a Native American gentleman and his daughter - - who kindly lent their brand new pickup truck to me, a stranger, until my van was repaired.
They even fixed the broken hinge on my passenger door when they noticed it.
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I could watch the news until I am queasy from the violence and calamity, and it would only take a few minutes of being open to the messages on the screen to begin feeling my faith in humanity ebbing away. Others can say what they say. I know what I have experienced, and it only takes a walk through the neighborhood to remind me of what I knew during all my travels: people can be pretty amazing when their highest selves are called upon.
As it lengthens by the years, the history of America seems rather like the life of an individual: it becomes a forest of beautiful, straight trees all mixed in with dead, broken branches and overgrown, decaying matter until it sometimes becomes difficult to tell what the forest was. It can be hard to find the original pattern, the driving intent.
It is good to return to the root, the source, to remember why we’re here. While I have some very personal ways to do this for my own life, on this day more than any other I remember with great reverence the call to higher thought that prompted the birth of this country. I used to have the documents hanging on my wall, but the Internet has made it very easy to find if I ever forget the words:
http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/document/index.htm
and of course:
http://www.ushistory.org/documents/constitution.htm
The Jenotopia household sends its warmest blessings to all our fellow Americans across the globe, and to our friends of all other nations who have offered assistance to strangers without a second thought.
