Despite the troubles of the Trump years the US continues to offer so much

It was a Saturday evening in February 2018. The sun had long dipped below the horizon as I drove south along a quiet highway in Florida. I was still hours away from the state’s famous beach towns.

Instead, I was driving through a more mundane, but more authentic, American landscape – a land of endless highways and interstates, neon signs advertising motels or gas, and giant billboards asking drivers to “Call 1-800” or come to God.

I was feeling unsettled. Earlier, I had attended the Florida Gun Show, the state’s largest gun event. Two weeks previously, a gunman had opened fire at a school in Parkland, killing 17 people.

Not that this impinged on the gun fair. AK-47s, hunting knives, and rounds of ammunition were laid out like some grotesque modern souk as families browsed the wares. Next door, a dance competition was taking place. Little girls in pink dashed in and out of the entrance, mingling with adults holding their gun purchases.

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Travelling across the country, the physical beauty of the landscape took my breath away

Hours later, the experience was weighing on my mind as I drove through the Florida darkness. I switched on an audio book to pass the time – Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, a masterly work of historical fiction that exposes the horrors of slavery. As the novel approached its climactic scene – the lynching of a disobedient slave – I had to stop the car and compose myself. I sat there for a while, wondering if I could really live in this country.

As my time as Washington Correspondent for The Irish Times comes to an end, I have been reflecting on the country that has been my home for 4½ years.

I arrived at, in many ways, the lowest moment in recent American history. Donald Trump had just been inaugurated, and while his presidency was fascinating to cover journalistically, it was alarming to experience. The firebrand president threw out the norms of governance and ruled like an autocrat.

I sat in the White House Rose Garden beneath a searing sun as Trump declared "we're out" of the Paris climate agreement, observing my fellow journalists watch in silent dismay as they steeled themselves for one of Trump's interminable, rambling monologues.

As I leave the US behind, I reflect on a country that has its share of problems and divisions, but one that is so much more than any political moment

I stood outside the White House when protests erupted after the death of George Floyd and witnessed law enforcement officers clash with demonstrators. And I looked on in horror as a mob of Trump supporters made their way to the US Capitol on January 6th, in some ways the inevitable climax of the demagogic Trump presidency.

But despite the troubles of the Trump years, the US offered, and continues to offer, so much. Travelling across the country, the physical beauty of the landscape took my breath away. From the empty red deserts of Utah and Arizona to the sparkling waters of Lake Tahoe, the majesty of America is astounding.

The country's literary and cultural tradition is rich and deep. I visited the homes of Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner in Mississippi, and listened to amazing live music in Nashville (where I once spent a summer singing for a living in an Irish bar).

But what I will miss most about the US is the people. Wherever I travelled, I was consistently struck by the generosity and warmth of American people. Their relentless optimism, good humour and willingness to engage make it a pleasure to live in this country.

When I look back at my time here, there is a kaleidoscope of memories. But some stand out. The Trump-supporting mother of a DC friend who showed me around Birmingham, Alabama. The immigrant visiting her undocumented sister who had been picked up by police and told me her story in southern Arizona. The breakfast I shared in a Victorian guesthouse in rural Minnesota on the banks of the Mississippi, where a wonderful elderly couple explained why they liked Trump to a polite Minneapolis millennial and his boyfriend over pancakes and hot coffee.

As I leave the US behind, I reflect on a country that has its share of problems and divisions, but one that is so much more than any political moment. The United States, in its vibrancy and modernity, is always reinventing itself, always in the process of being formed.

I remember the words of poet Amanda Gorman as I sat beneath the shadow of the US Capitol witnessing Joe Biden’s inauguration. “When day comes, we ask ourselves: Where can we find light in this never-ending shade? . . . Somehow, we do it. Somehow, we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.”