Footpaths and Trails: How We Own Them and Miss Them in Our Hearts

Photo source: geograph.org.uk

 

When do you go for a walk? To welcome a new morning and inhale its charming minutiae, to clear your mind, or to stroll down avenues of calm and buzz with your friends, chatting lightly about you, them, and life? What is the one constant in all the above? The footpath.  

Footpaths have a fascinating way of reminding us who we are. So many have come before us and walked the same paths. Their footfall created the physicality of those natural footpaths, the trails we walk. I know this is a stereotyped metaphor - walking the paths of our predecessors and ancients. This brief note anyway does not mean to have any such philosophical gravitas. This is just about the footpaths.  

Yet, footpaths, especially the naturally evolved ones, always summon up thoughts of the very many people who would have walked the same path. A heavy pedestrian flow is mirrored in the wear and tear of these narrow lanes. Unlike tarred or concrete roads, they are mostly attired in a cloak of thick vegetation. 

The different kinds of ferns, shrubs, lichens, and weeds that border the footpaths sometimes surprise the walkers as they put on display, a flamboyant flower or a colourful insect. If the human traffic is low, spiders will encroach on the air space that bridges a footpath. They are great weavers, they need only a night to create that perfect web, two flimsy branches each on both sides of the footpath acting as the launching pads for their creation. 

The cobwebs made overnight catch the dew of the morning, they shine in the beam of light coming through trees, the Komorebi, the Japanese call that light. The morning strollers, if they are not careful, will have their faces wrapped by the fine strands of the cobwebs, imparting a sensation that a serial killer has suddenly wrapped a thin cellophane sheet around their face.  A single strand so fine sticks to your face and it is not easy to tear away when there are many of them woven into a delicate web. Better be alert for them and ward off beforehand to clear the path.

Some footpaths are closely connected to generational memories. In a rural setting, they have associations with each stage of an individual’s life. All the crucial journeys of an individual begin and end by walking them. For example, one's first walk to the school, the first journey for a job interview, and the first walk home with a special friend.

When I started school, another footpath was imprinted in my memory. It was the one that led from our gate to the main road. In the monsoon rains, this footpath, headed uphill, will turn into a murky, roaring stream. 

My mother (who taught at the same school) and I would have to swim our way rather than walk to reach the main road. The water would reach my chest as I held the school bag above my head with both hands. Fighting the force of aggressive water flow, we would navigate, swaying and slipping the whole way. 

As a teenager, I started walking the footpath across the paddy field near my house, every evening. This footpath leads to the nearest bus stop. This is the same footpath, as a small kid, I used to watch over from our veranda as we expected a relative to visit; because they would be bringing sweets and candies. In our rural hamlet, visitors were rare.

The creepers, by instinct, avoid treading on footpaths. They sense that they would get crushed under a human foot and keep themselves to the fringes of the path. 

The floor of the heavily trodden footpaths gets as hard as a rock from the constantly stomping feet of walkers. The sky above it is often a narrow ribbon of blue tangled in the green canopy of neighbourhood trees.

The development of better roads, tarred and concreted ones, and urban encroachments now threaten these age-old trails. A 2019 study attributed the disappearance of footpaths to urban development, fencing, mowing, and parking activities.

In Detroit, another name for informal footpaths is 'desire lines'. They embody the desire to get around. America has many natural trails, including the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, and the Colorado Trail, to name a few. In the UK, the walkers charity, Ramblers, has a project to reclaim lost footpaths. In every country, such footpaths are loved but neglected and hence lost in time.   

Then we have the ancient footpaths of trade, pilgrimage, and adventure- the Silk Road, the Old North Trail, The King's Highway, and the like. 

Some footpaths meander through forests, mountains, and grasslands and even those that cross deserts and deep gorges. The footpaths of England are supposed to have originated as very ancient pathways of the Iron Age civilisation. Later, Roman occupation and the inter-regional trade turned them into then Anglo-Saxon migratory paths.

There are 'public-right-of-way' issues emerging all around the world. Public footpaths are often encroached on, closed sooner or later, if on private land, and lost when people stop using them. This is also an outcome of the growth of automated transportation, which renders walking redundant and promotes a fast life in which there is no time for walking. 

Robert Frost immortalised the disappearing of a footpath so heart-warmingly in his poem, Ghost House,

"O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield

The woods come back to the mowing field;

The orchard tree has grown one copse

Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;

The footpath down to the well is healed."

Organisations like the Open Spaces Society of England work to protect footpaths and the people’s right to walk them. A footpath always has a place in the perceived charm of the English countryside. The Guardian newspaper even launched a public campaign to share people’s memories of lost footpaths. However, many other countries have not warmed up to an enthusiasm for footpaths.