Just think: The Great Basin — Beautiful corner of America

Published 11:39 am Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Observer columnist

“Where are you going?”

“The Great Basin.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s the area between the Cascades and Sierras and the Rocky Mountains. Technically it starts east and a bit south of Bend, Oregon and goes all the way south to an area southwest of Las vegas, to the Mojave Preserve, where the Great Basin Desert, the Colorado Desert and the Mojave Desert come together.”

That’s a dialog I had with several people asking me where we were going on our trip this spring. There were long vistas, remote towns, sparse traffic, and lots of places to camp with our little trailer, culminating with a few days visiting friends in Tucson.

On the way south, we stopped at Summer Lake Hot Springs, with its big concrete pool enclosed in a barn-like structure built in the 1920s. Summer Lake is on the western edge of a wide basin with mountains in the distance. The Winter Range towers abruptly above the lake and its snow-capped ridges presented a spectacular contrast to the warm temperatures and sere slopes just beginning to turn green below.

That evening we met a couple from Seattle in the pool. As we floated in the hot water, the usual questions ensued: “Where’re you from?” “Where are you headed?” It was a first visit to the springs for the woman, whose husband had a conference to attend in Bend and brought her along. “I just had to get out of town, get away from it all,” the woman said.

Not surprisingly, small talk turned to politics and the presidential primaries, including the xenophobia exhibited by some of the candidates. “Why are you going to Arizona?” Gail, an African-American, asked and I said, “We have long-time friends there who are in poor health, and we like camping in the desert.”

Gail said, “Given the politics there, I’d never go to Arizona. I’d only go if I had a relative there who needed me.” Such is the response to Arizona’s reputation for a gun-totin’ citizenry noted for being unfriendly, if not hostile, to any non-white person — black, Hispanic or Native American, much less Muslim.

Although I didn’t witness border patrol hassling brown families with small children on the roadsides as I have in the past, by the time we left Tucson, I heard myself say, “I hate Arizona.” It was the heat, the relentless sprawl, the traffic, and generally aggressive culture. Arizona drivers are quick to cut you off, whether on the freeway or coming onto an arterial from a parking lot.

So my simplistic answer, “Friends in poor health and desert camping” got me thinking: Why do I visit Arizona when there are so many things about it that I not only don’t like, but think are bad social policy? How can I spend any money in a state whose government at several levels treats some of its residents so badly — the recent primary voting debacle being only the latest example?

I began ruminating about Arizona as a metaphor for our whole country. There have been times (like these) when I have wondered if the US government will become even more dysfunctional, less humane and more authoritarian — times like the late 1970s when I and my former husband, a long-time peacenik and conscientious objector, considered moving to Canada, even though he was no longer subject to the draft. We didn’t, and my travels state-side explain it.

Not only am I still hopeful that the US can repair itself (literally, materially, and also figuratively) but I love the land itself. I love the desert, mountains, forests and seashores. The Columbia River is “a dagger in my heart” as one of my cousins says, reflecting what Conrad Lorenz wrote decades ago — that the most beautiful landscape is, for all of us, the one where we were raised. So I stay put, hoping my one little voice for tolerance will make a difference.

Then I thought, “What would be the musical score, if my experience of this country were a film?” If I were Czech, it would be “The Moldau” a tone poem celebrating different aspects of the Czech countryside, history, and legends. If I lived in Finland, it would be Sibelius’ “Finlandia” especially the last “hymn” movement. But here, the theme music must be “America the Beautiful,” with spacious skies, amber waves of grain, purple mountains majesty above the fruited plain — and of course, “crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea”.

Victoria Stoppiello is a north coast freelance writer, whose husband wears a button that says, “The holy land is everywhere.” You can reach her at anthonyvictoria1@gmail.com.