





FORT LEE — In November, as the winter chill is setting in, General George Washington's army is retreating from the Palisades cliffs and into New Jersey, toward the Hackensack River.

An ambush from the British has forced them to abandon Fort Lee, and they're headed south, for Trenton. The wounded will go to Morristown.

Robert Sullivan, an author and journalist, is nearby, at a Starbucks, getting provisions and studying a map prepared by Robert Erskine, Washington's surveyor general, that he downloaded off the Internet.

"It's all still here," he says. "The landscape really has it. You don't need to make anything up, you don't have to dress up — though I'm not against dressing up — but the landscape already has it."

Sullivan is retreating, too. He'll follow the path the Continental Army took from Fort Lee into Leonia, around that "impassable swamp" of the Meadowlands and across the Hackensack. The author of several books about New York and New Jersey, his newest, "My American Revolution," probes the hidden history of the War of Independence in the region.

His works, among them 1998's "The Meadowlands," unravel the complicated relationship we have with the landscapes around us. He achieves this by exploring those landscapes, by car, by boat and most often, on foot. Today he is charting new territory, though. He's tweeting his retreat.

"First view of the Watchung Mountains & the Meadowlands!" he punches into his phone, a "dumb phone," as we walk down Fort Lee Road toward Leonia. "An ancient vista!"

Cross the Delaware in a boat in the winter? Doable. Cross Ivy Lane on Liberty Road in Teaneck on foot? Good luck! — Robert Sullivan (@RESullivanJr) November 14, 2012

"It turns out this is what Twitter was invented for," he says aloud, passing beneath the Route 46 overpass.

The path Washington's army took is as practical today as it was in 1776. He'll travel beneath 46, the New Jersey Turnpike and across Route 4 in Englewood, a route familiar to commuters and increasingly harrowing for pedestrians, and then head north, looping around the Meadowlands.

"When you're in a car, yeah you know there's a hill and stuff, but you really don't pay attention the way you do when you walk," Sullivan says. "When you walk, you really are one with that landscape. But you rarely see people walking these paths. There's never really anybody out. And the cops kind of circle you. I can't blame them."

Descending Fort Lee Road, he looks to those mountains in the distance, where the Americans will seek the refuge of high ground and the British will try to rout them out. This march is known as the Continental Army's "Retreat to Victory," and it happened right around this time 236 years ago, the same pre-dawn Morning Star hanging over General Washington and the writer who ambled after him.

This is a history we drive past every morning, headed over the George Washington Bridge into New York, but it's not entirely forgotten. This weekend, more than a dozen living history groups will recreate the British Invasion of New Jersey in the bridge's shadow. Costumed Continentals, militiamen, British soldiers and Hessions will do battle on the Palisades. Sullivan is decidedly pro-reenactment; they're an exciting way for people to engage with this history, he says.

"But here's this other idea: How about after the battle? Or before the battle, or after they're chased out of New York and Fort Lee and they run, they leave their cooking pots behind, and they march," he says. "So you sit there and you say, 'Wow, there's no HBO special on the boring trudge.' But it seems like that's the bulk of the war."

So he trudges.

Along the way, there are prompts. A sign in Fort Lee reads "Retreat Route 1776" with an arrow pointing westward. Outside the Presbyterian Church of Leonia, a marker, erected July 4, 1916, depicts the general on his horse. His men follow closely on foot.

But mostly, there are bus stops. There are crosswalks where cars pass quickly and pedestrians gamble with their lives. There's a 7-11. Several, actually.

This is why New York and New Jersey don't get their due. On the list of historical tourist destinations, the Turnpike overpass in Leonia, which crosses the old inland highway, English Neighborhood Road, does not rank high. Boston — with its tri-corner hats and its Freedom Trail — gets all the credit, Sullivan says.

"The war starts in New York City," he says. "Everybody talks about the Siege of Boston, you know, the Battle of Lexington and Concord. They did a great job, I'm not against that, but that was the siege. We had not yet declared war."

And the country the Continental Army traversed from the cliffs of the Palisades into the Watchung Mountains and onward is the same one we inhabit. Robert Erskine's "impassable swamp" has swallowed whole developments not far from where the American Dream project sits waiting in the Meadowlands. The Hudson River still swells in Edgewater, causing destructing during storms.

"The landscape is still dangerous to us the same ways," Sullivan says. "We still suffer from the same issues of flooding that they dealt with in 1776. The place is the same. The past helps us understand the future."

1st major strategic error in retracing Continental Army's evacuation of NYC: eating lunch in a bar in Hackensack. To the Passaic! — Robert Sullivan (@RESullivanJr) November 14, 2012

A fellow traveler, lost, crosses the street and we help him find his way. Sullivan is headed for Wallington, where Washington's troops will cross the Acquacknonk Bridge over the Passaic River, burning it down as they pass.

To get there, he'll head northward, up Grand Avenue, around Overpeck Creek and across the river. Mistakes will be made. The Continental Army's path is winding, and there aren't always markers along the way.

After we part near Route 4 in Englewood, he sends a text message: "As I think about it, guess I would say in general, history shows us where the landscape has hurt us and where it has saved us or helped us survive."

Onward, he marches, toward the Hackensack, toward the Passaic, toward victory.

Robert Sullivan's book, "My American Revolution," is published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He'll read at the Morristown Library on Thursday, Nov. 15 at 7 p.m. He is not related to the reporter of this story, though they share an affinity for wandering around New Jersey.