A New World

About 70 miles west of New York City was our destination Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. We spent a very quiet and relaxing weekend in a place that seemed like a parallel universe version of some landscapes I remember from Germany and Poland, mixed with a really nice portion of Americana. It is so interesting to see how much of the pioneer spirit is left in the country, how many townships are just beginning to shape. It is fascinating to see how large the areas of property can be, and how they now are detached from actual use of the land, how some of the property is just that, property. Landscapes in Europe are very much shaped by thousands of years of feudal tradition, (and so many, too many wars).
The land in the south of Germany, for example would usually be divided among all the sons in the family. The older the son, the more land he would get, but all of the sons would be farmers on smaller and smaller parcels of land. In northern Germany, only the oldest son would inherit the farm, keeping land ownership intact and forcing the younger sons to participate in land free activities, like trade, or clergy. (Mostly trade.)
The Land rules here, on the other side of the globe seem not quite as traditional (and there is so much more land to be divided). Many of the places along our route had old Native American Names, but the land somehow felt not quite conquered yet. Many of the houses near the road were built as if they were a transition between a very recent past and a better future. Much of the land was simply used as a stage for a house and a garage. It would be interesting to observe how a landscape that is shaped not by the quest for food production but for entertainment will be transformed in the course of hundreds of years. How many golf courses can a continent have? American landscapes seem to have skipped certain developments too. Walkways are certainly not as popular in a country that is best explored by car, as they are in the country where the car was invented, after centuries of walking and horse riding as main form of transportation.
I know most of these innocent questions can make any urbanist or historian grab their head, it is just so fascinating for me to see how beautiful and often untouched America still is, and how quickly certain elements of culture are put into place here, while others that would seem quite natural in any place in the old world, just do not seem necessary. There are no Castles in the stares, the villages are not huddled together. Houses are not built like fortresses and not all roads here lead to Rome. It is fascinating however that many of the places have names that were not brought from Europe, and it would be interesting to imagine this continent the way it was before it became the New World.

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This page contains a single entry by Witold published on July 4, 2002 11:57 PM.

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