248. Grateful for US Regionalism

I don’t know if I have written this before in my American gratitude list, but as it is the season of gratitude, I’m going to write about the distinct regionalism in our great country. There are a zillion examples in topography, speech, climate zones, etc. The American West, where I’m from, is a great landscape of wonders formed by the Rockies and the other mountain ranges. The Southwest is warmer and dry from the variety of deserts and because of the weathering patterns it has amazing rock formations from the Rio Grande to the Colorado. The Northwest has its own desert effects on the Columbia Plateau and the Snake River Plain and the mountains here are heavily forested, often temperate rain forests. And then there are the plains states between the Rockies and Appalachia—beautiful windswept grasslands and farmlands. The eastern seaboard has the gentle Appalachian Mountains and Gulf states are sub-tropical with warm waters and a variety of plant life not to be found anywhere else.

Then there are the quirks brought by the varieties of peoples who settled there. Here in the Northwest we have creeks, like much of the country, but New England has brooks and the Dutch settled Hudson Valley and parts of Pennsylvania have kills. We all have our regional names inspired or given by the indigenous people of where we live from Washington’s Yakima Valley to the southern Chattahoochee River. The blending of languages all brought together into the ever-evolving English that we speak throughout the nation bring us a gorge in the east to a Grand Canyon in the west. In parts of Pennsylvania people call others youse guys, while in the south it becomes you all, or y’all. Our accents and landscapes give way to foods that also were inspired by not only the natives of the land, but the people who invaded so that maple syrup of New England has become generally American just as the squash and pumpkins of the south and corn of who-knows-where have become part of our unique national heritage. This heritage we sing of and riff throughout our Jazz and Blues, our Country Western, our Rap and our collective being from Florida to Alaska and Hawaii to Maine, logging, fishing, mining, farming, manufacturing, and weaving into this amazing quilt of 50+ pieces that make us both Idahoan, Floridian, Hawaiian, New Yorkers, Virginian—Americans. This is one of those e pluribus unum things that makes me so thankful for my country and so proud to be an American.