In the boundless landscapes of this country, we find our love for a new nationalism.
I FELL IN LOVE with the United States as a child. Born and raised in India, I learned this country the way any eight-year-old child learns anything. I was afraid and excited and fell in love with the wild spaces that lay at the outskirts of my new American life. But even at a young age, I was aware of the fact that I didn’t look like the others in the campground or on hiking trails—but I didn’t dare wonder why. As new immigrants we often accepted facts as they were presented to us.
My immigrant parents took a chance on camping. They wanted to give us America and so on we went to explore her, with a single tent and a few sleeping bags. We gained wisdom from all the white families around us who didn’t smile at us but gave us just enough space to be their neighbors. I remember clearly the moments I lay staring up at the tent ceiling as I fell asleep. A little brown, immigrant girl smiles to herself in a Minnesota campground. Tired from all the newness of the day, she yawns and thinks, “I love America.”
So much has changed since then. I am a grown woman now and no longer the “other” in my immigrant mind. I am the patriotic American I always aspired to become. I am flawed but strong. I am scared for my country’s future but unwilling to stop fighting for its betterment. I am a lover of wild spaces and a proponent for sharing their grace with others who haven’t had the opportunity to experience them—people whose formative memories may not be scented by dirt and pines and wood smoke and morning dew.
I want every little brown girl and brown boy, and every girl and every boy—whoever doubted their self-worth and sense of belonging in this country—to venture outdoors and explore it with a sense of wonder that comes with this privilege called confidence. I want everyone to stumble across treasures the way I have—in grassy fields, in wooded lands, on snow-covered lakes somewhere out there in “real America.” All of America. Out there, in the wild, we make the memories that form us. In the boundless landscapes of this country, we find our love for a new nationalism. One grounded in humility and gratitude and driven by a desire to share, protect, and diversify.
AMBREEN TARIQ
