A view of the night sky from the Antelope Canyon, Page, Arizona. Photo: Ameer Basheer/Unsplash
Americans invented the idea of national parks. They sing of amber waves of grain and sublime purple mountain majesties. They’ve made the Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Yellowstone shrines of national identity and idealise nature in speeches, literature, painting, photography and architecture.
And yet American lands today are torn by conflicts over science, religion, identity and politics, with contradictory conceptions of nature at the heart of a broken national consensus.
To Native Americans, nature and culture are inseparable, and the identity and the history of a tribe is thoroughly interwoven with specific places, such as Rainbow Bridge or the San Francisco Peaks. In contrast, many White Americans embrace wilderness, defined as nature that is free of human presence, with no roads, telephone lines or electricity. The wilderness is, to them, eternal and pre-human, an idea at odds with b
Sixteen notable writers have created a combined list of places that they believe helped shape and define America, from coastal Oregon and Solvang, California, to Ellis Island and New Hampshire’s Black Heritage Trail.
The resulting collection of mini-essays, including contributions from memoirist Cheryl Strayed, novelist Jodi Picoult, humorist David Sedaris and activist Gloria Steinem, was organized by Frommer’s, the travel guidebook company. The collection can be read for free online.
The compilation is designed to be food for thought rather than an invitation to hit the road.
With COVID-19 cases surging in many parts of the country, “we don’t want people to use these essays as the basis for travel until doing so is safe once again,” Pauline Frommer, who heads the guidebook company, told the AP. “We hope this list will be a spur to future travel, but we also just wanted it to be great reading right now.”