It is very easy to bike into town to get provisions at the country store or at one of the farm stands, and appear like another Brooklynite up for the summer. The truth is that I am an interloper.
To me, the town looks like a Raymond Carver story, an Edward Hopper painting, or any of the towns on the imported American network shows I grew up on. “Dawson’s Creek” and “Gilmore Girls” captivated my mind with images of a pastoral existence of quaint old wells and gentle brooding in gazebos. For immigrants to America, cultural shock is absorbed by the familiar blanket of simulacra. America is everywhere.
It is 2 PM on an August weekday, and few people are out as I pedal the flat terrain. Here beauty is unavoidable. Any mundane errand means traveling between creeks, rolling hills, and fields strewn with yellow goldenrods and purple loosestrife. The air smells of cut grass and sometimes of hot gravel, but usually it smells of nothing — a soothing absence of stench. I cherish America for its vastness and the possibility of privacy, but I don’t belong to this inviting tableau of soft, deep greens. I belong to an aggressive mix of yellow and olive.