Places, Resources, and Experiences That Shape How We Interpret “the United States”
Crystal De Soto-Schmidt:
Growing up, I learned history in school that felt distant from my own life and my family’s experiences. Through my work in environmental interpretation, I began to recognize how that same distance often appears in interpretive sites, where many histories of place remain only partially told. Participation in California Indian Education for All workshops and the Native Ways of Knowing book club, particularly reading Damon B. Akins and William J. Bauer, Jr.'s We Are the Land: A History of Native California, deepened my understanding of these gaps. As a Chicana, I find that recognizing the absence of our stories continues to shape how I approach interpretation and the importance of more inclusive histories of place.
Julia Pinnix:
I was lucky enough to live outside of Washington, D.C., for a period of my childhood, and to have parents who brought me to the museums. We also visited national parks, monuments, and historic sites all over the country. I loved learning about our shared natural and cultural history. But as an adult, I see the stories told in these places changing, and have been part of that change in my own career.
Nathan Taxel:
I encountered the writing of Edward Abbey at a very formative age and the love hate relationship with these United States found within Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang continues to stick with me today.
Abbey provided sage advice for all of us when he wrote:
“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am—a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.”
Luetta Jean Coonrod:
The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers by Thomas Fleming and Founding Gardeners by Andrea Wulf both broadened my perspective on how our nation began. It had growing pains, and the people involved were deeply committed to doing the right thing as a new political entity.
Monique Thompson:
I often return to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., when I think about how I interpret the United States. When you stand at the wall, you see your own reflection alongside the names, and something shifts. The story is no longer something you are simply looking at. You are in relationship with it. In that moment, it is not just about what happened. It is about what it means to be human, together, in the presence of it. That experience has shaped how I approach interpretation. It reminds me that our work can hold space for shared witnessing, for loss, for grief, and for the human cost of our history. In those moments, something shifts. “I” becomes “we.”
Emily Jacobs:
While working in Yosemite in the early 2000s, I visited Manzanar National Historic Site, when conversations after the September 11 attacks were still raw and fears about targeting Muslim Americans were being openly discussed. Near the end of the exhibits, a simple photo of the Twin Towers being struck by a plane quietly asked: how easily could fear lead us down that path again? Moments like that remind me that interpreting America means telling the good, the true, the proud and the painful.
Kristin Robinson:
The history of medicine hooked me early, and I quickly discovered it's a lens into who we are as a nation. Learning how people have pursued that universal drive to be well opened up everything at once: the promise of scientific progress and the hidden history of Henrietta Lacks, the triumph of the smallpox vaccine and the horror of smallpox blankets as weapons, allopathic medicine alongside women's folk wisdom and the deep plant knowledge of indigenous peoples who knew their homelands intimately. It shows me a country that has always been made of many parts—triumph and tragedy, things we want to claim, things we find shameful, and hopes for the future—all rolled into one. That complexity is what I try to interpret.
