This week marked the sixth year since I moved to the United States. In these six years, I have been and seen a lot of things. I have been a student, a tourist, an employee. I have been a creator of a very fulfilling life for myself. I have met and built connections with incredible people. I have navigated immigration, education, labor, social, and healthcare systems. I have also been fortunate and persistent enough to see and experience America beyond its systems, an America that to me has been less about materialistic pursuit and opportunity, and more about simplicity and beauty, an America less talked about. 

Any time I go back to my home country for vacation, the first question I get asked from family, friends, and acquaintances is “I, kako Amerika?” This question vaguely translates to “So, how’s America?” and almost always ties to wealth, labor, and immigration status. I anticipate the question, I understand the implication, and yet, I never seem to have the right, all-encompassing answer that could be shared in a sentence or two. At the same time, I feel like whatever I say as a response is either met with scrutiny or an uncalled-for and quite elaborate perspective from people who have never been to America, or have heard about someone else’s experiences living in America. I usually share a simple and quite generic response, listen, nod, and try to move on with the conversation. The last thing I want to do on my Macedonian vacation is present my experience of living in America as universal.

This year I did not spend my summer vacation in Macedonia. I was road tripping through six different states, in three separate trips. But for some reason, I still kept thinking about the “how’s America?” question, and by the end of my last trip, I found a simple, genuine and perhaps to many unexpected answer.

I have never heard anyone describe America as beautiful. I have heard people describe separate places in America as beautiful, but not America itself. It often feels to me as if the list of adjectives that would describe America or one’s life here cannot contain anything related to just its beingness as a vast and incredibly diverse land on this planet. The moment I start wondering why this is so, the answers unfold seamlessly. Because America is so often synonymous with consumerism and capitalism, duality and isolation. Because the outdated definition of the American dream to many is a trap into a dungeon of never-ending labor. Because to explore and connect with the beautiful and simple things here, you have to constantly check with yourself and continuously defy the systems that tie your entire value to work and possessions. 

Six years ago, when I was packing my suitcases and I was getting ready to start a new life here, I promised myself one thing: Whatever I did, and however things turned out for me, I was going to go and see places in this country. If I came to pursue something, more than anything it was joy and freedom to explore life the way I wanted. If the American dream ever existed, that was (and to this day has been) my version of it.

***

During the summer, as I was exploring the places I had been dreaming of exploring, pursuing that joy and freedom I had envisioned, I kept checking with myself. Is this even real? How did this even come to be true for me? Seeing the bison cross streets in Yellowstone. Pulling over on the side of the road to watch wildlife that I used to only see in my English textbooks in high school. Speechlessly admiring an emerald alpine lake after an excruciating uphill hike in Grand Teton. Chatting with incredibly kind local people who share Wisconsin cheese and camping suggestions with us in Colorado. Patiently waiting and witnessing an eruption of a geyser in Yellowstone. Walking through surreal hoodoos in the otherworldly Bryce. Feeling infinitesimally small while cycling between the intimidating sedimentary rocks of Zion. Admiring the craft and learning about the lives of the Native American peoples in Wupatki National Monument in Northern Arizona. Observing deer run playfully in the San Francisco Peaks of Flagstaff. Witnessing the melting snow turn into mesmerizing waterfalls in the mountain slopes of Glacier. Gazing at the night sky filled with stars until your eyes get tired somewhere on the Utah-Colorado border. Walking aimlessly without time restraints and watching sunsets on Pacific Beach in San Diego. Moments coming full circle within my universe. A reminder of what I have been wanting for myself. The dreaming child, the ambitious teenager with sky-is-the-limit visions, and the wandering adult self soaking it all on the road, the choices that you make, the prettiness and the promises that you keep to yourself. 

As I was starting to draft this reflection, I also kept thinking how odd and somewhat uncomfortable it feels to write about the beautiful things of an infamous country with deeply ingrained systemic injustices and currently ongoing political tension. I do not live in a bubble of naivete, as I hear, witness, and live through some of the impact and unfairness of it all. Neither am I oblivious of the layers of privilege that I carry in my life, be they innate or earned. Over the past few years, I have experienced how easily you could get swept into both of these sentiments, the hatred and the frustration, or the false notion of limitlessness and the idealization. But it is all those beautiful things that have been reminding me over and over again what matters to me and what fulfills me. In the past year, more than ever before, I have had to let go of draining expectations about how things should have come to be by now. I have had to be mindful of taking on other people’s frustrations about sucky circumstances and situations. Lastly, I have certainly had to reconnect with the vision I had for myself before moving to America. What’s my life here about? What’s America about?

To me, being able and willing to see America beyond its systems has also been about finding my place in this country. It has been about creating a life on my own terms, about choosing and balancing between defiance and surrender, about realizing that you belong where you feel most free to break all the patterns and expectations. My life here has been about pursuing whatever I want, without having to beg, fit, follow, twist my authenticity, without having to justify my actions, needs, desires. America itself happens to be my ground for searching, finding, and (re)creating the beautiful things within and without. That, through the experiences of my life, is what America has been about.

***

My friend and I are driving through Grand Teton National Park. It’s a beautiful sunny day. Wherever you drive in this park, you see the Tetons. You are in perpetual awe. Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” plays in the background. The bison are going about their life in the distance. And then there is us, two free-spirited Balkan girls with wild immigration journeys, driving ahead to Yellowstone, grinning, wowing, singing. Priding at the promises kept to ourselves. Loving the life we choose to create for ourselves, here and now.

So, how’s America, you ask?

It’s beautiful. America is so very beautiful.