CONCEPT
My assumption with this list of five runs somewhat counter to the assumption for the other list.
While every place offers something worthwhile, some places offer a perspective, a landscape, or a lifestyle so rich, so at odds, so introspective, that its experience is profound. I was looking for these places… essentially places I couldn’t possibly live without, when I tried to come up with the 5 states I’d visit no matter what.
COLORADO
To understand America, I have to understand the mountain states.
The focus of Colorado is Denver, which is a dynamic and cosmopolitan city with a boom/bust history. To its east stretches the furthest reaches of the great plains, with huge consolidated farms and tiny specks of town. To the west lies the Rocky Mountains with its crags and valleys, mines, and whatnot. This place is choked with atmosphere. I could live a whole life here and never get to the bottom.
NEW YORK
To understand America I have to understand the East.
New York state, with the Adirondacks and Niagara Falls is gorgeous to drive through.
But in spite of a healthy midwestern bias (it’s “pop,” dammit), I chose this state because of New York City.
I’m not basing this on New York’s population or national importance… I have never (and will never) consider the Big Apple to be “the capital of the world.”
I think that Chicago is a much more qintessential “big city.” It has a center and everything proceeds logically from there.
I think that L.A. is a city of the imagination, of humanity persuading the elements to create a landscape of curves and warmth in an environment of luster and convenience.
New York, however, is such a precise experience, in its subjection of rock and granite, in its victimization by channels and islands, in its need to develop a specific vocabulary, as a “burroughed” city, as the largest city in the country, as an important port, and all the other stuff. I don’t think you can understand America without tacking what is New York and specifically New York.
Yes, they’re home to the Yankees, but at least they’re home to the Mets.
WASHINGTON
To understand America I have to understand the west coast… the edge of the world.
Areas that have been continuously prosperous are not of interest to me.
In some ways, the life in Washington is “the good life,” especially along the coast and Puget Sound… with all the trappings of general economic success, a vibrant and diverse cultural life, and beautiful scenic splendor. But Seattle has always been boom-or-bust. It’s best known for strong coffee a kind of music called grunge and its favorite son blew his brains out. Meanwhile, it rains 300 some days of the year, and more serial killers hail form these demented parts than anywhere else.
Weird.
Cooooool…
LOUISIANA
To understand America I have to understand the South.
Yes, I understand that reliving the past or hinging your identity on a past is dangerous.
But in Louisiana, it seems, the past would be lived and relived with such passion and vitality that it exceed the degree to which the rest of the country lives the present and future.
Parades, binges, fat jazz, dark nights on bayous. Plantation legends and voodoo… this is a place less like America than maybe anywhere else in America, and to such an extend that typical political division or historical arguments seem to be skewed and twisted, and to take on new meaning.
So Louisiana, and maybe those infested cities in particular, may be rotting and hurting and aged aged, but damn, if it isn’t a party all the way.
MICHIGAN
Being who I am, this call is easy.
I would like to argue, however, that as a more objective person, I would have still chosen Michigan.
My argument is as follows… to understand the U.S. I would have to, *have to* understand the Midwest. I might even argue (though this is unquestionably biased) that the Midwest is the most “American” part of america, simply because the sensibilities and priorities in this part of the world represent the mean and median of American culture… that we have more in common with the rest of the country than they have in common with each other.
Whatever… make of that what you will.
In the midwest, I would immediately discard Indiana, and soon Wisconsin and Minnesota would follow. They are too small and too isolated an experience to be the sole midwestern state I would select.
That leaves me with Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio.
My Ohio argument hinges solely on Chicago, which, while it might not be as educational as NYC, I certainly love much much more. Chicago is the urban model of a big city… it is direct and streamlined and logical, and nevertheless, there is so much to see and examine here. It’s dizzying.
The rest of Illinois is like the west branch of Indiana.
But, while I do believe that a big city experience is essential to knowing America, I do not know that two are. I do not believe that Chicago itself is essential in this regard. And given the weakness of the rest of the state by my measures, I would set Illinois aside.
That leaves Ohio and Michigan.
Ohio is more intimate and more closely tied together. Cincinatti, Columbus, and Cleveland are all galvanizing metropoli with complicated histories and beautiful vistas. But I tend to think that what Ohio offers by way of exploration, of discovery, Michigan offers just a bit more extremely. Cleveland is bested by Detroit. Lansing and Grand Rapids do not by any means measure up to Columbus and Cincinatti. On the other hand, I cannot find anything in Ohio that suggests what the thumb of Michigan or Saginaw do. Nothing equates to the hunter-friendly auto-financed lake culture of the north, or the weird abandoned mining towns of the Yoopers. The cliffs and the mountains far north, and the northern lights.
So in the most objective evaluation I can give, Michigan still edges out Ohio, but only by a sliver.
You might have figured from my comments that I am not interested in the least in heaven on earth.
I want to see, to experience, and to surround myself with the struggle and battle and vindication of life. I want to see people in the thick of it, wrestling with questions in their gut and in their minds. If it’s in a beautiful forest, or a rusted out industrial complex does not matter.
Give me questions questions questions!
And there you have it: Colorado, New York, Washington, Louisiana, and Michigan. In about that order.
~ Connor