A new study finds that cultural divisions between Americans are at an all time high.
And social media is fueling the problem.
As cities grow closer,
some say rural communities are pulling away.
Americans today are like siblings
that haven't talked to each other in years.
The question is: how do we bridge that divide?
How do we learn to talk to each other again?
Be a family again?
Hello?
Hey, little brother...it's been awhile.
How's the beach life?
You know me, man.
Just doin' my thing.
I was thinking......
You got plans this weekend?
What do you have in mind?
In America, our heros take a different path.
We don't do Cinderella stories about
country folk in the big city.
We travel in the opposite direction
towards the source.
Maybe it's in our blood....
All of us pioneers at heart.
But maybe it's these wide open
spaces that beckon us to wonder.
Whatever it is, it's undeniable...
the magnetic pull tempting us beyond
the mountains of our minds.
The Golden State is a land of dreams
built on shifting desert sands.
A coastal Eden addicted to the fickle
trickle of snowmelt from the mountains
most never see.
Without water
it's just a mirage.
A ghost town in the making,
like so many skeletal settlements
where the rivers of fortune changed course,
and the desert devours the
vain creations of man.
California is a state built on fault lines
in a country where the fault lines are all too clear.
Once in a blue moon the tension rises
until something breaks.
Denial... it's a tempting escape.
But history has a way of repeating itself, doesn't it?
Maybe that's what pulls us out here.
Perspective.
Because some things are clearer
from farther away.
And as we lose cell service,
we discover a more ancient, purer form of connection.
America doesn't have a Sistine Chapel.
These are our sacred places.
Monuments sculpted from wind,
water, and time.
Long after the gold plated towers of
our cities have crumbled into the sea,
these places will remain.
So generation after generation
we set off on a pilgrimage
to surrender ourselves before nature;
define truths only heard atop
lonely peaks
and wash our spirits clean.
Eventually, we all must come down from the mountain.
But as the naturalist John Muir once said,
" Going to the mountains is going home."
So in a time when many of us don't see
eye to eye,
maybe we'd all do well
to heed mother nature's call
and take a bit of her timeless wisdom
with us back home.