Dizzying Heights

Imagine that these airy United States sit on a point of balance that is their center of population. A cosmic ball bearing. At the start of the republic, the fulcrum lodged somewhere north of Philadelphia, tucked snug against the coast, and the continent sloped off gently to the Pacific. Slowly that fulcrum rolls westward, until one day, in late September toward the end of the last century, it finds perfect equilibrium. On that day the continent balances straight even, a day, you may remember, of warm breezes, when every love discovered is eternal and every duffer's putt runs plumb and true. But the giant steel ball continues to edge westward, and the nation tilts now on an easterly slope. When that happens, Horace Greeley's ghost fluffs his pillow and shifts in his sleep, and the quicksilver that is Opportunity begins to run upstream, pooling in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains....