The idea of traveling across American borders is a stressful process now - specifically for people who are not white and blond - so much so that many (me) suggest (demand) that it should come along with a prescription for anxiety meds. Will they accept my visa/passport? Will they strip-search me before the flight? Will they buy me dinner afterwards? Will they confiscate my laptop, phone or tablet? You feel, in essence, vulnerable. And that vulnerability in the face of an almighty nation-state is perhaps the biggest change that the Americans have wrought on the world since electing a carrot into public office.
But international traveling still stresses me out far less than US domestic journeys. There is something about leaving the relative safety and liberalism of New York that now makes me nervous. In my darkest periods in the States I’ve come to think of America as some kind of Walking Dead episode, where the likeminded and sane are sequestered into urban pockets of resistance and far outnumbered by the dazed racists that roam the country with frothy mouths and murderous hearts, looking for immigrants to kill. So it was with some sense of trepidation that I took my first trip out of New York City since the elections.
Fontana Dam on the Appalachian Trail - built during the Second World War
I kept seeing Trump/Pence signs tacked to houses and mailboxes
We had planned an excursion into the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, several hours outside of D.C. The state of Virginia is, in case you don’t know, very white. Like, WHITE white. But the prospect of seeing grass for the first time in months was rather enticing, and so I agreed. I spent a night in D.C. and the next day we embarked on the journey to the national park, which has long been famed for its beauty and is the gateway to the famous Appalachian Trail, a hikers’ path that runs hundreds of miles down the East Coast of America and boasts some of the most spectacular scenery outside of a Planet Earth DVD. If you are interested in reading more about it, Bill Bryson has written a semi-funny account of his epic journey on the trail.
If I were I to attempt the trail, we both know it would probably end in a news report in late spring of my body being found in thawed ice with a batch of trail mix and a cell phone for good measure. But there is a road for cars called the Skyline. It is for this road that we had traveled the several hours outside of D.C. Apparently it was made because the government wanted to create jobs during the Great Depression of the 1930s, so they just kept making roads on government dollars, and the result is hundreds of miles of roads - spectacular in scope and scenery.
As we neared what the GPS system assured us was the entrance to the park, I kept seeing Trump/Pence signs tacked to houses and mailboxes. The houses here were small and looked like the farm house from the Wizard of Oz with its slats of wood and triangular roof. American flags were displayed prominently, as were “Support the Troops” stickers on the backs of large pick-up trucks. In some houses elderly couples sat staring straight ahead on their porches, their graceful farms stretching out behind them. To my unaccustomed eyes it looked just like a movie set, mainly because I so rarely see this kind of paraphernalia in real life. I kept imagining what the lives of these people would be like, the Trump voters about whom I hear so much but know so little.
The author's concerns about his journey through Virginia - an episode of the Walking Dead
We realised we had taken a wrong turn (praise the Lord) and found a petrol pump right outside the real entrance, where we parked to wait for some friends. Incidentally they were a couple, she a Pakistani and he a Syrian. This wouldn’t have concerned me in the least except when I went into the convenience store: the first person I saw was a fat white kid with a high top haircut wearing a Trump cap and a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Make America Great Again”.
I was suddenly conscious that all the roughly two dozen people in that store were white. I saw a total of three different people, unrelated and not traveling together, wearing some version of the same T-shirt. This is what I mean about vulnerability. I and many other people feel extremely vulnerable in these kinds of situations.
“The biggest change I think,” said the Pakistani-American girl to me later as we were unpacking the picnic at a scenic spot a few hours later “is that if I am standing in line at the cashier and don’t have the exact change or enough money, I am worried the person behind me may shout ‘Go back to your own country!’. I mean, I’ve been here since I was one, you know?”
I don’t, but I do know what it is like to feel an alien in your own country and others. A lot of people do. Which is probably why being in such a gorgeous setting as a national park reminded me that despite all the sinister micro-aggressions that are now part of cross-cultural (and intra-cultural) exchanges all across the world, the land is still just that. Land. Not borders or nations, but dirt and trees. Universal, unjudging, undulating and unforgiving, especially if you get caught without a cell phone after dark.
