Crossing lines to appreciate the whole

File Photo: The crew of Apollo 17 took this photograph of Earth in December 1972 while the spacecraft was traveling between the Earth and the Moon. The orange-red deserts of Africa and Saudi Arabia stand in stark contrast to the deep blue of the oceans and the white of both clouds and snow-covered Antarctica. (NASA/Getty Images)

SOMEWHERE IN THE POCONO MOUNTAINS — Per the dateline, I’m not exactly sure where I am in the rolling green mountains of eastern Pennsylvania. The landscape is filled with both the beauty of nature and the thousands who flock here to enjoy it. I’m nestled nicely somewhere among all of that.

But I’m not lost.

I married a coal miner’s granddaughter, whose mother hailed from these hills under which millions of tons of anthracite were mined to keep the country’s lights on for nearly two centuries. That, of course, is coal, the “rock that burns,” according to the museum at Eckley Miners’ Village, a coal mining patch town near Freeland and where the 1970 movie, “The Molly Maguires,” was filmed.

A reunion of first cousins, of which my very wise wife is second-oldest, spurred our multi-week, eight-state trek east and back, making our link in a million-car chain of Americans motoring around orange cones and sampling a variety of vistas.

Surely the world — with its special sessions, American presidential campaign and Olympic gathering in Paris — has inched forward over the last couple of weeks. Interestingly, I’ve found the road provides a modicum of insulation from the din and drone of the 24/7 news and information cycle, modern America’s soundtrack, even for a journalist and news junkie: guilty on both counts.

I’ve also found, among those here for the reunion from Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California, Iowa, Arizona, Florida and a few ZIP codes between and betwixt, a seemingly communal sense of moving in the same direction. My more jaded self chalks that up to good manners and an unwritten code among participants to steer clear of any discussion of politics. That said, something else seemed afoot.

Obviously we need to elect a president, write good tax code, support our public schools and uphold the values of democracy in our laws and behavior. Americans also appreciate it when the U.S. Olympic team checks a bag full of gold medals for its return trip home after the Summer Games.

As we made our way across the face of the nation, however, we saw a vibrancy in people at work and play, in their friendliness and helpfulness and, with absolutely no empirical evidence save simple observation to support this assertion: a palpable sense of hope.

I’m not naive enough to recognize that our politics woefully divide us. But on our travels we encountered no semblance of a “failed country,” whether in cities or towns or even villages. Obviously a single long road trip is simply that: a single long road trip in a snapshot of time. Plus, if you’re looking for something other than the lowest common denominator or a narrative that paints an abyss of negativity at every sign post or mile marker, I suppose you can find it.

We didn’t.

Many years ago at a symposium on “futurism,” I was part of a discussion about the photograph “Blue Marble,” the first picture of the Earth as a single entity and how the image might change us. The photo was taken in 1972 aboard Apollo 17, piloted by astronauts Gene Cernan, Ron Evans and Harrison Schmitt. Much of our discussion had to do with the idea that while we draw lines we call borders, detail maps, and know oceans separate us, “Blue Marble” proved we are indeed inhabitants of a single place, one home, Earth.

I thought about that discussion as we crossed state lines that demarcate us: Iowa from Indiana, Indiana from Ohio, etc.; as we drove through massive Chicago as well as tiny Effort, Pennsylvania; as we marked the campuses of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Penn State Nittany Lions. Each, with its own personality and place and life, is still simply a matter of lines and divisions and differences that we have drawn or developed, but still all part of a single nation, which in turn is part of a single whole, the “Blue Marble.”

Yes, as a member of the chattering class, I will continue to comment and observe as I am now (he said ironically). Many of those pieces will be at odds with the ideas or policies or behavior of others, too. To do so, I’ll be on one side or another or still another of some line we’ve drawn.

And I won’t be lost.

I will, however, having driven over all those artificial divides in all those places different from mine, among all those people whose politics are not mine, have a greater appreciation for the whole.