Are you a foreigner?
community, education August 17th, 2009I spent last week touring national parks in the American west. The route took us from Arches to Bryce to Zion, and the Grand Canyon. It’s a popular route, with the campgrounds that we stayed in booked solid every night, but still with nice access to wildlife and amazing natural wonders. Not surprisingly, there was a diverse cross section of world travelers at these spots, with French, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Japanese and Russian discernable at each and ever stop and hike.
At the Canyon Overlook Trail in Zion National Park, we turned a corner and were greeted by an outgoing older couple with the question, “Are you foreigners?” My wife and I both laughed, and the first thing that she thought to say was, “I don’t know, do you consider Colorado foreign?”
Much like this older couple, I was surprised to be outnumbered by people from other countries. Technically their use of the term foreigner was correct in denoting those not native to America, but it sounded so alienating and inhospitable. The question certainly got me thinking about differences between cultures, but mainly about our similarities.
Traveling with my teen and tween sons, with their sometimes exasperating behavior, I was comforted to see parents from all lands going through similar motions. There was the German family at Bryce with the teen son who rolled his eyes and glowered when asked to sit for one more picture, and the French family that all coaxed the youngest back up the trail at Zion after a long hike, and all parents yelling at their kids to get away from the edge of the trails, particularly at the precipitous drop offs of the Grand Canyon.
I cringed at the Russian couple garbed in biker leathers that screamed at each other about the best place to take a picture, just as readily as I did the posse of young American men that were loudly drunk at the ice cream stand in Vegas not believing they couldn’t buy another alcoholic drink there. I was also happy to see other parents playing with their kids, reading to them, taking them through museums, and pushing them a bit along the trails.
I found that some of the strangest and most fascinating strangers came from my own land. There was the NASCAR-clad family that spoke in strong southern drawls, the motor home traveling family who each carried their own tiny toy dog, and the Harley-driving biker posses of doughy middle-aged couples.
Driving through the Navajo Indian reservation was perhaps the most telling reminder of the ‘foreigner’ sentiment. To loudly ask if you’re foreign in America neglects the many origins that make up the country, and to rightfully attribute the foreign status to all but a segregated few.
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August 18th, 2009 at 2:37 am
Thank you for this nice piece, it is really spot on. I’m a native of a country that covers less than a thousand square miles, so in that position you have to pretty quickly get used to the fact that, whatever you do, wherever you go, you are in fact a ‘foreigner’. But at the end of the day it’s all irrelevant – people are all the same wherever, they just come in different ‘packaging’ (I think it’s called ‘adulthood’!)