It’s dark out here. Even though it’s mid-August and the world feels like it’s on fire (and in many places literally is) where I and millions of other Americans live it often seems like the dead of winter.

This dispatch comes from deep in the American Political Wilderness. While it is dark out here, it’s not lonely. Legions of us are wandering these surreal, sometimes chimerical wildlands. There are ghosts out here, spirits and sprites and faeries. Echoes of long ago that we find reassuring, reverberations and reports of the best of what this land once was, and may again be. In the meantime we walk with hands outstretched in front of us, probing through the shadows. Sometimes we bump into each other. They are gentle bumps, because we all move so cautiously. We have to, in the darkness. These encounters very nearly always are salutary, even reassuring. When we encounter one another we fall into conversations about where we’ve come from and where we hope one day to arrive again, to return. We reminisce together. Though we often barely can see one another, we swap landmarks and waypoints, and especially places to avoid. Then we move on, hoping to be gone. We hope to meet again, and sometimes do.

We who have come to dwell in the Wilderness are expatriated from political civilization, from the Political City down there in the valley. While some of us were forcibly evicted most of us are here voluntarily. We come from all parts of the country, from all walks of life. Among us are all races, all colors, creeds, languages, orientations, traditions. Thanks to the shadows we are not colorblind, neither are we color obsessed. Our primary sense is not sight but hearing. As such we tend to be musically inclined, and as such we appreciate and celebrate differences and variations. We listen to one another. We anticipate the next verse, eagerly. We thrive on the unexpected even as our commonalities bring us together. A piano is a piano, whether the player is playing a Stravinsky requiem in 13:4 time or an Ellington swing in 4:4.

From time to time light pierces the void and we cast our gaze on the Political City, upon Civilization, if only briefly. And still joyously. From atop a mountain on the Fourth of July we watch the City alight with fireworks of both the legal and illegal sort, which we somehow find reassuring. Sometimes we even journey to the City, and you’ll find us in the sunshine on beaches and in parks on Cinco de Mayo, in barrooms and pubs on St. Patrick’s Day, and lining broad thoroughfares on Chinese New Year, celebrating those thoroughly commodified, universalized ethnic holidays that have become part of our national tradition. You have become truly American when one of your culture’s most cherished celebrations is used for a beer commercial. Then we return to the wilds.

Other times from the Wilderness we see the City go from light to pitch black. The latest indictment of this or that politician, the latest revelation of corruption, the newest scandal suffuses the air even way out here. It snuffs out the sun and the atmosphere seems to turn to pure carbon dioxide. Even out here it feels impossible to breathe, because among other truths, those of us in the American Political Wilderness understand, acutely, the true challenges and crises of our times, and how the manufactured political clickbait smothers any chance they will be tackled, much less solved. We gasp for breath equally at the words “Hunter Biden” and “Russiagate.” We strain to remain conscious when this or that politician or pundit threatens to put their opponents in prison. If we had the space in our lungs we’d scream, with apologies to Gale Snoats, Damn it, don’t we have enough to contend with?!

Every now and then we reach a clearing where there’s a settlement, the outskirts of the Political City, and that’s when things get dicey. On one hand, we recognize such clearings and settlements. After all, we used to live in such places ourselves. For a moment we feel pangs of nostalgia, even affection. We find ourselves pining for those broad spaces where the complexities have been clear cut, for that homestead on a clean patch of land where still stands a perfectly lovely home. We remember our own lives from not so long ago.

Then we notice the people who live there have built a porch. The wood is newer than that of the home itself, and the incongruity is jarring: The porch doesn’t belong. We realize that the people who live here built the porch not because it’s a nice addition, nor to add to their homestead’s value, but because it has a clear view of the next parcel over, where live the Others, sworn enemies who in most cases they barely know. As we cross the fringe of these parcels the residents don’t fire a shot but they do regard us from the porch with a sort of grim and implacable suspicion. They know we are not one of them, but at the same time we’re also not one of Them. We are interlopers in the places we used to live, welcome to pass through but not to stay, much less settle. We do not expect to be invited up to the porch for lemonade and camaraderie.

Nevertheless, once in a great while we dare approach them on their porch and engage them in conversation. After all, we once were neighbors. Perhaps a little of the old affection, the old fellowship, can be salvaged. We are quickly disabused of the fantasy. Their words are familiar but their dialects are novel and inscrutable. We are like Mandarin speakers attempting to communicate in Cantonese.

When we interact with them we are struck by their commonalities. The members of both clans are convinced, in their heart of hearts, that the other is hell bent on nothing less than the destruction of civilization. Both sides are equally prone to toss around words like “weaponization” with abandon. They are equally emotive and incapable of reasoned debate. They are equally unable to empathize with each other, or even to muster the critical thinking that might possibly lead to a grudging sort of tolerance, if not understanding. They become equally unhinged at the mere thought of the Other. Their hatred is something palpable, almost alive. It animates them. It is frightening, and sad. Members of both clans find us Wilderness dwellers peculiar, perhaps a little dangerous. Not nearly as much as the Other, but still worthy of suspicion. Some of them take us for cowards.

Sometimes during these brief visits there is a TV, radio, or computer stream going in the background. We are struck by the parallels in the stories they tell each other about the other, the almost perfect mirror images. We note also the similarities of both clans’ leaders. One is led by a corrupt, mentally unstable septuagenarian congenital prevaricator with a history of racial animus. The other is led by a corrupt, mentally unstable near-septuagenarian congenital prevaricator with a history of racial animus. Both are prone to angry, profane outbursts when challenged or even mildly disagreed with. We hear one self-reference as “a very stable genius,” as the other tells unhinged stories about a character called Corn Pop, and wonder how any sane or rational person could fall under the thrall of either.

And so we walk away slowly, sadly, back into the alienation of the Wilderness where at least it’s safe. Back to where we have reasoned debates, where we can disagree over details while agreeing on the important things. In the forest of alienation we can be irreverent without being portrayed as disrespectful. Words like “cancel” are absent from the forest dialogue. Differences of opinion are merely that, not cause for hatred. After all, it’s all music in the end.

We wander broad valleys and mountainsides and constantly are reminded, goddamn, this land, this country, it’s beautiful. We are content, if disaffected.

From time to time members of one or the other clan themselves journey to the Wilderness and enter the forest of alienation, intent on doing it harm merely for existing. After all, all that anger and hatred needs the occasional outlet. They rampage, they set fires at random, they trample the wildflowers. During such episodes we Wilderness dwellers climb high into our trees and watch the conflagration unfold, wondering why they feel it’s necessary, and what they believe they may be accomplishing. These cataclysms mercifully rarely last long, the mobs exhaust themselves and retreat to their clear cut homesteads and their porches, after which we climb down to survey the carnage. Our hearts break to see that the casualties are the innocents whose only sin and mistake was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We bury the victims, replant what we can, and salvage whatever is salvageable, knowing that ultimately only time will heal the wounds. We hope against hope that every rampage will prove to be the last.

From time to time we believe a new leader has arrived to guide us out of the wilderness; to date we have been disappointed every time.

Still, we have reason for hope out here in the Wilderness. The populations out here are growing all the time. At this point there may well be more of us in the wilds than there are on those clear cut homesteads. We see new faces all the time, from all over, and they are received in the ancient guest-host tradition. Which is to say, they are welcome, no questions asked, simply because they have chosen this place. That makes them us. Some of them are wide-eyed: They’ve been at their unthinking homestead for so long, watching the same political reruns, that they had forgotten this wider, welcoming world even exists. We swap stories of when we became aware of what’s going on; the stories are unique but share broad contours. In every one of them, as in those of us who arrived here before, there is a palpable sense of relief.

Because there is no greater feeling in life than unburdening yourself of hatred, animosity, spite, vindictiveness. There is no greater feeling than the realization that you have more in common with your fellow human beings than you ever imagined, no greater feeling than saying, “We may disagree, but you are welcome at my table.” There is no greater right than the Right to Roam.

That’s what life is like here in the American Political Wilderness. It is wild but not lonely, uncharted but not foreboding. It is populated by those who believe in what Abraham Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. It is a good place to be. May it stay wild.

Here’s hoping that we see you out here soon.