One good reason to travel around America is to meet American people all the more so if you're one of them yourself.

I went out west for ten times. if you're one of them yourself.

I went out west for 10 days

and rediscovered what I already knew

that our people don't mind talking about themselves.

You call a cab at 5 a.m. in Flagstaff, Arizona,

and a cheerful guy pulls up at your hotel and you ask him how his day is going.

Fine. He says, I'm on the midnight shift, he says. I love to see the sun come up I ask him are you from here he

says no he's from Boston he came out here to help his son who owns the cab company and he loves Arizona the climate

relieves his arthritis. So what did you do back in Boston, I say?

In Europe, this question might raise hackles,

like asking what's your annual income,

but he doesn't mind.

He's a retired Baptist minister and now the door opens wide and

you've got yourself a good conversation all the way to the airport. He asked if I had come out to see the Grand

Canyon. Yes indeed, I did. The day before I got up at 5 a.m. and hiked over to the South Rim and stood in the dark

in the midst of strangers as the eastern sky lightened and it was like church except there was no

singing and no handshakes. The light dawns and creation appears. Six million years of rock, the mighty Colorado

river down below, the underlying beauty of our little planet home, the silent

fellow tourists around us, whispers of German and Swedish and Japanese the canyon walls turning

reddish orange and you stand gazing down for an hour or two and I resolved to give up

regret which is merely self-pity, and to embrace what is true, namely love and kindness,

...