markbetz.net

Fareed Zakaria has a lengthy but worthwhile article in Newsweek that dissects the current American malaise in terms of the perceptions of a changing world that drive it, and shows that many of those perceptions are flawed at best. According to various polls 81% of the U.S. population believes the country is headed in the wrong direction. This piece is a good antidote to the drumbeat of gloom from media and political elites that have a vested interest in dissatisfaction.

Join me for a walk North from the vanished town of Millbrook in New Jersey’s skylands, along some ancient roads that lead us through two hundred years of history. This area played a vital role in the early colonial commerce of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and due to unique circumstances is home to some of the most fascinating intact structures and relics of that time. Heading north from the old village along a mountain track that hasn’t been regularly used in 150 years you can see stone walls stretching off through the forest, a reminder of the farmers and loggers who labored here for generations.

“Kittatinny Mountain begins at the place that is truly a water gap, thrusting its granite shoulder to the sky just East of the spot where the slim ribbon of interstate 80 skips across the Delaware River and enters the state of Pennsylvania. For many people this is perhaps all of the mountain that they see, as they speed across and over to the outlet stores of Stroudsburg, or the great expanse of the nation beyond. But the hill stretches more than forty miles Northeastward, well into southern New York’s Orange County, and is but one stony promontory of many in the long range that runs from New England deep into the south. Atop Kittatinny’s knife-edge summit runs the famed Appalachian trail, while at its feet the river lies like a sleepy snake, seeming in places to lap right up against the long ridge, marking New Jersey’s northwestern border in white-flecked silver.”

Read the full article here, or view the gallery of images.