For Part I of this post, click here.
The sweet is never as sweet, without the sour.
After driving 2,200 miles (3500 km) in California, Oregon and Washington I ended up at my former home at Lake Tahoe. Perhaps it was the juxtaposition of San Francisco’s relatively crazy population to a waterfall lit by a full moon over Lake Tahoe’s Emerald Bay, or perhaps it was the ease of simply traveling 2,200 miles with no road blocks, police questionings, landslides or other unavoidable catastrophe that would be inevitable if traveling that distance in Asia — the West Coast of the United States is simply a beautiful place.
And those that are looking beyond America’s economic woes and broken political system seem to still be living the good life, with or without money.
After leaving San Francisco, I dropped in to see old old friend Jeremy Leffert now making wine in Paso Robles, California (B on the map). We walked through his vineyard, examined wine blends in a celler full of oak barrels and ate cheese that probably cost more than some people’s annual income in Asia.
While Jeremy’s fingernails are stained from the juice of the grapes he grows and his hands reflect those of someone who works the land, the people tasting his wines don’t share the same physical characteristics. I wondered if the people tasting the wines around me thought about the largely migrant populations picking the grapes. I wondered if the couple arguing about wine and cheese pairings thought about the winemakers regular 14-hour work day.
These people were about the opposite of those who I saw on Mission Street. While I can make a guess if the wine drinkers surrounding me thought about how their wine got to their glass, in an attempt to not judge anyone too much — I’ll leave my conclusion out. However, the real revelation here was seeing the sweet balance the sour — a tough life, balancing a good life.
Balance is something I don’t necessarily see very often. The world’s growing interest in China’s nouveau riche puts me in many situations where I’m photographing symbols of growth or Asia’s cremé de la cremé. On the contrary, I find myself in places with great social, environmental or economic problems. So for the most part, I find myself photographing the extremes. And due to deadlines, timelines and logistics I often miss points between A and C.
However, in the land of the car — its normal to drive 20 hours just to go camping. Taking a road trip in America allowed me to see America’s rich, America’s poor and in general, a high degree of diversity — culturally, economically and in the physical landscape.
I very rarely have the opportunity to take long road trips in Asia. I find myself on planes, trains and cabs daily. And when I am in a car, I am never the driver. The great American road trip had become a foreign concept to me. And traveling like this, allowed me to see point B, in between A and C. Perhaps these are often the points between the extremes. The points that don’t make the news.
Weeks later I found myself climbing a rock high above Lake Tahoe. The deep blue of Lake Tahoe almost reflected the color of the sky above. While this was once my home, the view to me now was foreign.
Minutes away from my old home at lake level (6200 feet) I sat on an enormous granite slab I used to frequent. I dont think any body of water in all of Asia is this clean. I think I actually avoid going into the water in most of Asia simply out of mistrust of the cleanliness. You can only read so many “bag of dead babies found in river stories” out of China, before you make the decision that a lot of water might not be good to swim in.
Sitting on the rock I thought about my time at this lake. I covered local news here for three years — and the lake was consistently the biggest news maker. While it made sense at the time, having spent time at some of the world’s most polluted waterways since my time here, it makes the lake even more special now.
This lake is a symbol of the great beauty that exists on America’s West Coast.
As I traveled up the West Coast and through the Sierra Nevada the amount of friends I saw and reconnected with grew like a snowball, as did the many differences I saw between the East and the West — both physically and metaphorically. The sky here is blue (you can actually see it). The water here is clean. People obsess over wine and not beer. People drive cars long distances, they don’t take trains. Tacos aren’t in hard, stale yellow shells. A red pepper could cost ¥35, not ¥0.35. People don’t smoke in elevators and throwing your trash in a lake or out of a moving car would be taboo. The list goes on forever …
However, for an expat there’s no better way to see the differences in where you currently reside and your former home — than by actually visiting the place where you grew up. For me, that’s Vermont — which might be the complete opposite place of Beijing. That’s where I headed next and where Part III picks up next.
