Rural Rambles

I’ve been reading a curious work titled In Your Stride, a manifesto of sorts in favor of walking. Written in England in 1931 by A. B. Austin, it describes the rapid changes of the rural landscape to accommodate the automobile—the widening of rural lanes, the straightening of curves, the paving of surfaces—and the influx of weekend visitors to the country and accelerating trend of rural peoples leaving for the cities (A road in is a road out, after all). The author doesn’t offer much of a solution, other than urging his fellow Brits to get out and walk for their holidays. But underlying this urging is the fear that the auto is changing something fundamental about the British life.

Walking equipment

Walking equipment

It is an odd and thoroughly alien concept for us Americans, these 84 years later, that we could walk any real distance. Indeed, that we would wish to walk as a form of transportation is no longer in our modern DNA. Our landscape has been on the whole surrendered to our automobiles. And that is even truer here in the country, where the casual walker is the commuter who has run out of gas, the “eccentric” who picks up trash, or the unfortunate DUI relegated to walking after an arrest.

It is, I find, one of the supreme ironies of our age that people routinely pack up their cars and drive hours to state and national parks for the pleasure of walking. Our cities, towns, and countryside, for the pedestrian, are like medieval castles walled off from the plagues of the outside world, where one can only visit at speeds fast enough to prevent contamination by contact.

I have long wanted to launch a rural walking society in which neighbors could walk the roads together, a rural ramble whose goal would be to reclaim the pathways of our communities. The sad reality, however, is that there is nowhere to go. The scale of the world we have created is suited only to fast transport. Any proposed rural ramble would have to deal with the paradox that most participants must drive to the start location, like those weekend hikers to the public parks, burning up the fossil fuels to get their dose of authentic nature.

A gathering of my neighbors walking to the nearest pub for an evening social would take three hours and 24 minutes. Then there would be the walk home. A walk to our good friends at Kimberly Ann Farms would take two hours, 32 minutes. Definitely doable, but the direct route involves a long stretch of state highway, not conducive to either health or peace of mind. A more scenic route, the old roads first designed for horse and foot, would take a mere four hours, 15 minutes.

No wonder that our rural ancestors visited for days and weeks at a time. The distance, the scale of the landscape, was so vast and the countryside so thinly settled that the effort of travel was rewarded with extended hospitality. Yet, a case could be made that the automobile decreased our overall social interactions even as it made casual visits more available, much like the introduction of the phone cheapened the value of intimate correspondence, while greatly expanding the circle of those we could reach. (And God only knows what texting or tweeting has done to further these trends.)

Still, I hope there is some value to reclaiming the old roads and byways of our country. That the pace of walking, “the eyes to acres” of Berry and Jackson, allows us to see both the beauty and the scars (to appreciate the former and correct the latter). That that slower pace encourages a neighborly word instead of the short wave from a speeding car. That a regular excursion by foot might nurture our sense of civic space in both town and country. That it might not only slow the clocks but ultimately provide the courage to throw them away.

Then, if we are diligent and lucky, the distance between farms will not be measured in time but in anticipation of both the journey and friendship at journey’s end. And perhaps we will find that we have enlarged our world by the simple act of reducing its scale.

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Farewell to my cousin, Lynne Yeomans Craver. You were an elegant balance of joyful living and service to family, friends and community.

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4 thoughts on “Rural Rambles

  1. Very interesting post. No doubt the automobile and the network of roadways that enable it have had profound impacts on social engagement. The bounded personal space of what is in most instances the single-passenger vehicle creates a bubble mentality making thoughtless hostility anonymous and widespread. Yet my first reaction to your post was scanning memory for a multitude of exceptions both personal and situational.

    Summer camp of my youth was probably the most surprising discovery, where we walked everywhere — quite long distances in many cases — on paths that would permit no vehicles. Even now, I routinely walk distances in the Chicago Loop that would cause many to balk. My understanding is that Manhattan is also a walking city. And then there’s bicycling, which makes longer distances traversable in less time and with less effort. Lots of cities have significant bike commuting populations.

    But to your point (or Austin’s point), the idea of rural visitors demonstrating extended hospitality because of the considerable time and effort to travel the terrain (distances haven’t changes, just our relationships with them) is a social behavior that is nearly extinct in the age of motorized transport. Indeed, the whole idea of the global village, borrowing the term from its roots in information theory, has given us a false sense of connection due to enhanced accessibility. How we behave once we arrive (callously, I would say) is very much a product of ease of travel.

    • Thanks for the thoughtful comment.

      As I was writing this piece I did think of the many great walkable cities, particularly those whose cores were built in the 19th century. But as you get outside those cores the landscape gets distinctly unfriendly for the pedestrian. The nearest “big” city to us is Knoxville. The city has done a great job establishing greenways throughout the city, primarily on former rail lines. But the cynic in me sees the abandonment of the rail lines as an issue as well. It is an abandonment that stems in part from the conversion of our transportation from rail to vehicle. And with that transformation we get the endless suburban sprawl networked by car friendly roads. We may wish to have those rail lines back in the future. Unfortunately we sold all the scrap iron to China. Oops.

      But the great thing about cities in the Midwest is the tavern on one corner and the church on the other. Your spiritual needs covered on all accounts.
      Cheers,

      • Spiritual needs – at the bar and the church. Hmmmm sounds like a pun to this old curmudgeon. But tis only me wishing I’d thought of it first 🙂

  2. To the wider issue – walking for walking sake I think there is still some hope. Around Columbus, OH you can find some of the older neighborhoods going through stages of renewal that feature more bike paths, pedestrian corridors, and even residential development with a mind to accessibility of commercial opportunities in smaller bits and bites; moving away from a mega-mall mentality toward a more neighborhood, walking friendly environment.

    But at the same time there is still plenty of development – particularly urban spread into undeveloped countryside that can only be described as car friendly. So lessons may be there for some, but are certainly ignored by others. Perhaps a trebling of fuel prices may spur an end to widespread ignoring of the situation.

    Down the road we live on the simple act of walking your dog of an evening becomes a regular opportunity to visit with the neighbors and get some exercise. The neighborhood building aspects of this ritual has not been lost on us – so this seems hopeful as well.

    But there’s a walk – and then there’s a hike. Heading off for a 3+ hour excursion to meet with friends and neighbors for an evening leaves me scratching my head. Is the plan then to stay over or to hike back home? Are there little ones making the trip? Elderly folk? I know these other populations are not always involved, but if they are some allowance could be needed.

    I also share the despair over the too significant loss of passenger rail. I think there remains some hope that this too may come back – particularly with the incentive of much more expensive fuel.

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