Paths are the habits of a landscape. They are acts of consensual making. It's hard to create a footpath on your own.
Robert Macfarlane
The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot
A couple of years ago, The Solitary Walker introduced me to two fine books by the excellent travel writer, Robert Macfarlane — Mountains of the Mind: Adventures in Reaching the Summit (2003) and The Wild Places (2008). Macfarlane is one of those rare individuals who seems to have actually done what most of us only dream of doing. He is a tireless long-distance walker, a passionate mountain climber, a rock scrambler, an explorer with an insatiable appetite for adventure. And perhaps most important for many of us, he possesses a unique ability to extract profound wisdom from the terrain he has traversed, especially the ancient pathways that were created by the pilgrims and other wayfarers who preceded him.
Macfarlane's latest book is The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (2012). In the author's own words, it tells the story of Macfarlane's walks of "a thousand miles or more along old ways in search of a route to the past," only to find himself "delivered again and again to the contemporary." Whether you are an adventurer yourself, or simply one who enjoys reading about the improbable journeys of others, I think you will find both delight and insight in some of Macfarlane's observations about old pathways and their impact on the souls of the walkers.
Macfarlane's latest book is The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (2012). In the author's own words, it tells the story of Macfarlane's walks of "a thousand miles or more along old ways in search of a route to the past," only to find himself "delivered again and again to the contemporary." Whether you are an adventurer yourself, or simply one who enjoys reading about the improbable journeys of others, I think you will find both delight and insight in some of Macfarlane's observations about old pathways and their impact on the souls of the walkers.
Paths and their markers have long worked on me like lures: drawing my sight up and on and over. The eye is enticed by a path, and the mind's eye also. The imagination cannot help but pursue a line in the land—onwards toward space, but also backwards in time to the histories or a route and its previous followers.
* * * * *
Footpaths are mundane in the best sense of the word: 'worldly", open to all. All rights of way determined and sustained by use, they constitute a labyrinth of liberty, a slender network of common land that still threads through our aggressively privatized world of barbed wire and gates, CCTV cameras and 'No Trespassing' signs.
* * * * *
Paths connect. This is their first duty and their chief reason for being. They relate places in a literal sense, and by extension they relate people.
* * * * *
I've read them all, these old-way wanderers, and often I've encountered versions of the same beguiling idea: that walking such paths might lead you—in [ornithologist W.H.] Hudson's phrase—to 'slip back out of this modern world'. Repeatedly, these wanderers spoke of the tingle of connection, of walking as seance, of voices heard along the way.
* * * * *
These are the consequences of the old ways with which I feel easiest: walking as enabling sight and thought rather than encouraging retreat and escape; paths as offering not only means of traversing space, but also ways of feeling, being and knowing.
Whenever I see a narrow path through any type of terrain, I feel something deep inside that pulls me to it, makes me want to walk right into the image and take it wherever it will. These are absolutely magnificent images to accompany these thoughts on path-taking.
ReplyDeleteBe my guest, TERESA, and walk right into the images. I do it all the time. From my perspective, that's what an image should do—it should invite you in to explore something you might have otherwise missed.
ReplyDeleteDelightful photo. It's totally simple yet fraught with some kind of magic.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the lovely comment, LORNA, and thanks for stopping by for a visit. This photo was taken by me on a coast-to-coast walk I took across England a couple of years ago, and I know exactly what you mean when you say that it's simple but "fraught with some kind of magic." I think the magic is in the fact that there is nothing here to distract us from a path that recedes into the distance, a path that calls us forward with a whispered promise of finding something lovely—perhaps even ourselves.
ReplyDeleteOh, I WANT to be a better walker! This makes me feel it strongly. I just... you know, am bound to home and other duties that always seem more... well, important, because they're my responsibilities.
ReplyDeleteWhen it isn't cold and muddy I walk the woods behind our house and feel like finally myself. Usually though, I don't and so I don't - or at least not *that* self.
Sometimes I've thought, "I could just walk on and that would be alright."
Vicarious path-walking may have to do for now. Thanks for the book-tip.
We all live in different environments and have different levels of responsibility, Wendy, and I know that it is difficult for many people to find time for walking. Personally, however, I think we should never forget our responsibility to ourselves as well. With commitment and planning, I would bet that you can begin the kind of walking you have imagined for yourself, and I promise you this: Whatever you do, you will do it better, more mindfully, and with more joy if you find a way to incorporate a little walking into your life. I hope this sounds encouraging, as it is intended, not evangelical.
ReplyDeleteWalking through such green is a privilege. I often follow paths, some of them old by US standards, but young by the rest of the world. At any rate, I'm thrilled to put my tread where others have worn a trail.
ReplyDeleteAny path is a good path, BARB, and we are lucky to have them, especially in this country that is so obsessed with private property rights. That said, there is really something special about the old pathways that have been trodden for many centuries. I must say, of course, that there are few places in the world as beautiful as the areas of Colorado in which you find your trails.
ReplyDeleteGeorge…
ReplyDeleteNothing delights me more than to find myself with a new path to follow—not one of those "loop" trails in the public parks and reserves, mind you, but a path that leads somewhere, or at least did once upon a time. A purposeful path. The older the path, the better…and the really great ones are narrow, seldom used except by those who heed their call, and so ancient that no one knows the date true of their origin. Here in Ohio there are, surprisingly perhaps, a fair number of such paths—trails that wind through the state's earliest recorded history, plus some far, far older, from times of the moundbuilders, or later peoples who followed the Warriors Trail from the Great Lakes into the Dark and Bloody Ground that later became Kentucky, south to the Appalachians and Great Smokies…perhaps even to the Carolinas and present-day Florida.
Your lovely post—the photos are magnificent and perfect!—made me vow to myself that I'll not allow this year to pass without making time to explore several such paths I've been meaning to follow for years, but for no reason worth mentioning, have simply neglected. Thank you.
George, that's a very, very kind thing to say and not at all like preaching.
ReplyDeleteI'll practice first of all by remembering it's ok to do "frivolous" things that aren't frivolous at all. :)
Thanks for your lovely and thoughtful comments, GRIZZ. I totally agree that the older, purposeful paths are the most interesting ones, the ones that get beneath our skins and stir the imagination. Like you, I've never been keen on "loop" trails or "circuit hikes." I prefer to set out without knowing exactly where i'm going or what I will discover.
ReplyDeleteFrom your description, it appears that Ohio has abundant paths and trails of interest. Strap on the boots, grab the camera, and get thee to the hinterlands, my friend. That's what I plan to do—or perhaps I should that this is what I must do if I am to survive the madness of the modern world.
I think you would really enjoy Macfarlane's new book about "the old ways." Here is just a sample from one of the opening pages:
"It's true that , once you begin to notice them, you see that the landscape is still webbed with paths and footways — shadowing the modern-day road network, or meeting it at a slant or perpendicular. Pilgrim paths, green roads, drove roads, corpse roads, trods, leys, dykes, drongs, sarns, snickets — say the names of the paths out loud and at speed and they become a poem or rite — holloways, bostles, shutes, driftways, lichways, ridings, halterpaths, cartways, carneys, causeways, herepaths."
I'm reading Robert MacFarlane's book 'The Old Ways' at the moment. I loved his book 'The Wild Places' and really enjoy his writing. Have you come across Roger Deakin? His books 'Wildwood' and 'Notes From Walnut Tree Farm' are excellent.
ReplyDeleteThanks, WENDY. For what it's worth, it now seems that many of the so-called "important" things I've done in my life were the most frivolous, and many of the so-called "frivolous" things were the most important. Perhaps it's just another one of those Zen paradoxes.
ReplyDeleteNo, ROWAN, I have not read anything by Roger Deakin, but I know that he is frequently mentioned in Macfarlane's books. I will definitely order the two books you mention. Many thanks—I love this kind of writing. It makes me feel grounded.
ReplyDeleteGeorge…
ReplyDeleteI meant to find copies of Macfarlane's books when Robert mentioned him some time back…but I've now ordered copies of all three. And you're right that in addition to all sorts of state park and state forest pathways, we have a number of historic paths here in Ohio, ones that follow portions of the old Miami-Erie Canal, any number of ancient Indian trails, and miles of now-abandoned rail lines which snake through some of the most desolate corners in the state. Not truly footpaths, they're still interesting because they take you to long-abandoned villages and whistle-stops. I do intended to walk some this year.
Great news, GRIZZ. Glad to hear that you've ordered the books, which you will undoubtedly enjoy, and I look forward to some riverbank reports of any of these walks you plan to take.
ReplyDeleteThanks George. It is an exceptional book - to my mind, the best of the three.
ReplyDeleteAndy
Thanks, ANDY. I agree with you!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful. Your photos and the quotes sing the call of long distance walking, the putting aside of distractions, a way to travel into "the labyrinth of liberty" to enable sight and thought. It's finding that something that is bigger than ourselves and society, that we pray we can get back to, which is difficult in just a few minutes' daily meditation.
ReplyDeleteGlad you liked this post, RUTH. Macfarlane is a truly remarkable writer, and his books alone, quite apart from the experiences, "enable sight and thought." Yes, the pressures, but the more I live the more I am convinced that the battle with distractions must be waged daily.
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