This one isn’t metal related, except that it was a conversation with one of my jewelry students that brought it to mind. She’s a Welsh expat living in the Bay area. I spent a year in College in London, as well as living in southern England as a child. I’ve backpacked in Wales, so we got to talking about places we’d both been.
What struck me about the conversation was the mental size that Wales (and the rest of the UK) have in our two heads, versus the mental size that the US has in our experiences. It’s an old joke that Europeans don’t have any sense of the vastness of America, so this isn’t truly a new observation. I spent part of a flight back to the US once, “editing” the travel plans of an Irish couple who originally planned to land at NYC, rent a car, and drive down to Disney World, and then on to the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, then Yellowstone, across the top through Chicago, Niagara falls, and back to New York. All in 10 days.
What struck me about our conversation about northern Wales was that we were talking about places we’d both been, more-or-less on foot. No cars. Just trains and walking. The UK that we experienced on foot was human scaled, and distances loomed large, both in time and effort. The US, by contrast is almost exclusively experienced via car. Distances are measured more in terms of time spent stuck in traffic, rather than miles. Yeah, Santa Barbara may be 90 miles from downtown LA, but depending on the time and traffic, it can be anywhere from an hour and change, to half a day away.
I have a vivid memory of being on approach to Heathrow a few years back, looking out my window, seeing Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight clearly visible in the morning light, and being stunned that I could be on approach to London, and be able to see the south coast. When flying into my hometown in the States, I know exactly how far away the landmarks are, they don’t seem that far away. Yet they are. It was a shock to realize the radical differences in scale between the UK and US. When I was going to school in London, I had a friend who lived on the Dorset coast, near Portsmouth. It took most of a day to get down there via trains. To my American sense of scale, that said that it should have been several hundred miles away. It’s actually about 90. Equally, when I set out for my backpacking holiday in Wales, I spent a day, changing trains several times to get from London to Harlech, which said to me that it should have been a great distance away. A thousand miles at least. It’s actually a smidge over 200.
These are not entirely new, or unremarked upon observations. What the conversation brought up for me this time was to stop and wonder about the future of distance, and what that portends for both Europe and the US. Moving forward, in the long term, (decades, not weeks.) individual auto travel seems destined to fade away. To be replaced by what is uncertain, but it seems certain to reimpose a greater sense of distance on the US. What then will that do to our mental map of our country? What will it do to the political, social and economic life of the country? America as a concept, especially in the west, is rooted almost in agressive denial of distance. What happens when distance comes roaring back? Who will we be when it’s suddenly a big deal to get from Santa Barbara to San Jose, nevermind San Jose to Syracuse?
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
That takes me back to 2003 when my husband and I were flying back from our Greek honeymoon. We flew over the north coast of france, and then within a few seconds came across another coast, and I assumed it was the channel island of Jersey. It was the southern coast of England!!! Then it wasn’t many minutes before we were landing in the north of England. It really brought the tiny scale of the UK home to me.
Also, your experiences of UK trains and how long they take, is pretty much why a lot of Brits hate to travel by train!
You must log in to post a comment.