Joel Achenbach

“Geologists think the mountains were formed by several distinct tectonic events over the course of 500 million years, a span of time that represents a thick slice of the planet's geological record. The Appalachians once soared as high as the Rockies or even higher. They were most recently thrust upward about 290 million years ago, which makes these mountains older than the bones of the first dinosaurs. They predate the appearance of deciduous trees. They are older than flowers. There were mountains here before the Earth had ever seen anything as fantastic as grass. Some of the rocks were formed in the Precambrian Era, in that gray epoch when life was pondering a wholesale leap from one cell to many.”

“But perhaps we see a different set of sins in our own time: a reluctance to take on any new Great National Projects, a general self-indulgence, a culture built on consumption, whole generations raised in an environment where dreams are purchased at the mall. If we could somehow select the virtues of early Americans from amid their failings, we might choose their optimism, their endurance, their inventiveness, their willingness to do something big and difficult--like dig a canal across the mountains or build a new kind of road on rails. These people took on challenges that a more sober and settled population might consider too ambitious, if not downright insane.”