We all need rain. These days it often comes too much, too quickly, and in areas that may not need it. I left Rhode Island in rain – blustery storms that increased as I approached the southwestern border. Rain has characterized major transitions in my life since a child. My mother took me and my sister to boarding school. Education and religious instruction were left to her. My father made the money and introduced us to sports, or forking and shoveling a garden, but never social, emotional or spiritual life.

The hotel we stayed at was on the seaward side of the corniche road. During the height of the storm, waves crashed against the French doors that led to an outside terrace. Sandbags, outside and in, reduced the surge from breaking waves, but still the dining room had a layer of water, maybe an inch, across the floor. We tiptoed to our seats, as though stepping lightly in the water would keep our shoes dry and not soak our socks. It was not like recent dining in sinking St Mark’s Square during high tide where restaurants have provided boots or plastic bags as high as mid-thigh or even knees. All the same, we did eat above a skim of water, salty sea mixed with incessant rain.

Four years later I transferred to a new boarding school but this time it was my father, following a business trip, who delivered me to the headmaster and staff. Again, weeks of rain had disrupted the area including the school haberdasher. Reports, some with photographs, described ties, knee socks, flashers, and other bits of area school uniforms washed through the town on flooded rivers. I spent my first week not in a full uniform and my issued beanie, whose promised replacement never arrived, bore a dirty tide line an inch above the rear rim from ear to ear.

I can chart my early adolescence, my transition to adulthood, my early job starts, by recalling the downpours that accompanied them. I still remember people joking about putting out house anchors so they would not float away, developing webbed feet, marveling at mushrooms possibly growing bigger than their SUV, or just being dour and angry.

Crossing into Connecticut, the sky lifted and I drove easily, without windshield wipers and watchfulness. The wash of rain, like baptism, felt like a new beginning. I rolled through the folds that make the valleys where, in another age, manufacturing and invention had made Connecticut the Silicon Valley of the 19th century. Clockmakers — Seth Thomas, Ingraham, Ansonia, and Waterbury Clock Company —ruled precision then. In some towns, their factories remain as monuments to their craft, often repurposed, yet still visible from the highways.

Crossing the New York line, the rain returned, as if to wash away any vestiges of New England and the salt scent of ocean. I was headed to West Point. Those who know my Naval Academy past might wonder why I would sleep with the frenemy. The reason was simple: it was an easy ride from Rhode Island, and with a military campground, it would be an inexpensive first night. Besides, I wanted to check my earlier impressions from over forty years ago when I first visited as a midshipman

Boys will build. They play first with blocks. Then, in my era, they begged for a Mecanno sets with their heritage of engineering and echoes of the Industrial Revolution. Subsequent generations have asked for Lego’s, mass production in molded plastic. Now boys construct in MineCraft to satisfy the “block building gene” in pixels. Boys will build and often bust apart.

On my first visit to West Point, I discovered architecture as an emotional experience. The strong verticals on most buildings, especially the chapel, made me feel small. Largely without ornamentation, except crenellations to echo fortifications, rain darkened the gray granite and the buildings loomed more menacingly. I, me, an individual, am insignificant and temporal in this built world. Even the more modern buildings, renovations, or reconstructions, including those with classical rather than gothic elements, have not altered the feel of the place. Sightlines are straight. Buildings reach up. The river is down a cliff face.

The Naval Academy, younger cousin by almost a half-century, is a game. Its scale, while grand, seems welcoming and exuberant. Stylized battleships launch from the facade of Bancroft Hall. The main entrance has not only a grand staircase but also sweeping arms leading to its large bronze doorways. Verdigris window frames and a retiring green mansard roof temper the vertical and soften the paler granite stone. Throughout the campus curved walks bring the buildings into a comforting scale. The chapel, on the highest ground of the campus, is capped with a curved dome, only its spire pointing heavenward. In this space, I am part of the world, welcomed.

The differences extend beyond the campuses to geography. West Point spans more than 16000 acres; the Naval Academy just 350. Even with its support facilities across the river and not in Annapolis the Navy’s footprint is about 1500 acres — roughly three square miles to West Point’s twenty-five. West Point is a fully self-contained military post, surrounded by wilderness. The Naval Academy hugs the city of Annapolis; the two are interlinked and both front the Chesapeake Bay.

I have my biases. But as I set out on my American tour, I am trying to understand the country. There are two Americas. A continental, with foundations in an Army, that is stoic, austere, and self-sufficient; the other global, born of the Navy — open, adaptable, and interdependent. Perhaps the two could be embodied by two actors: Clint Eastwood and Mandy Patinkin. Each institution, each place, each actor embody distinct views.