No Place Like Home

Dear Reader,

As I return from my week-long hiatus spent vacationing in Maine, I have decided that this week’s blog will focus on my love for the landscape of the American Northeast. So often, discussions of the continental United States’s impeccable natural beauty center around the mountains, plains, deserts, and forests of the American West, leaving our region painted simply as one large patch of urban sprawl. I think that this phenomenon is at least partially rooted in the Western United States’s centrality to modern American mythmaking. Images of “purple mountains majesty” and “amber waves of grain” evoke the concepts of rugged individualism and frontiersmanship that are culturally embedded within our collective memory. Americans like to think of our country in this way. After all, for many people, pristine, unspoiled wilderness tends to inspire more positive feelings than cookie-cutter suburbs and supposedly “mid-rate” cities (Scranton, PA, Newark, NJ, most of Connecticut, etc.). 

The Northeast is more than getting stuck in traffic on I-95, though. The Northeast Megalopolis, a highly urbanized region stretching from the DMV or D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area to southern Maine and New Hampshire and containing almost 20% of the U.S. population while simultaneously taking up 2% of the nation’s landmass, has pockets of natural beauty - such as Sterling Forest. My new beloved summer stomping ground is part of the New York-Newark, NY-NJ-PA-CT combined statistical area,  yet when I walk in the woods, the bright lights and loud sounds of the city feel so far away. I think it is also important to remember that even within our concrete jungles and perfectly manicured lawns, wild, untamed things still live and grow. There is the lichen growing in the sidewalk cracks and the birds singing us awake in the morning. Even if we try to ignore its presence, we are constantly surrounded by the natural world because we are a part of it. 

My experience roadtripping through this region over the past few weeks has affirmed my appreciation of this landscape. I love how in the span of thirty minutes, a drive through the Western New England can take you past both plastic-manufacturing plants and picturesque, green, rolling hills. I love how quickly my dad can go from cussing out drunk New York City drivers to reminiscing about the beautiful drive we just had through the Hudson Valley. Surprisingly, I love the feeling of stepping on a muddy river bottom on a hot day even if it feels like I’m wading through a pile of the various types of fecal excrement found on the streets of New York City.

Best,

Dani G.