Uploaded August 2025 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
Our attitude to the right to walk anywhere. In Britain we have public footpaths that have been in use for centuries, millennia even, including the right to walk across land that is actively farmed: for livestock and meadows, and scrubby uplands. This comes with the responsibility not to destroy a farmer's crops or scatter their livestock, of course. America has 3 million square miles of land, but only a tiny fraction has designated footpaths, typically in National and State Parks. Farmers do not welcome you to walk on 'their' land. Indeed, they all have guns and you might very well get shot.
Whereas we in Britain just walk in the fields in our daily lives, I never in 25 years saw any sort of access to 'private' farmland in the USA. And yet, up till 1776, the Native Americans were walking everywhere. What happened to their paths and their rights?
Our attitude to the right to walk anywhere. In Britain we have public footpaths that have been in use for centuries, millennia even, including the right to walk across land that is actively farmed: for livestock and meadows, and scrubby uplands. This comes with the responsibility not to destroy a farmer's crops or scatter their livestock, of course. America has 3 million square miles of land, but only a tiny fraction has designated footpaths, typically in National and State Parks. Farmers do not welcome you to walk on 'their' land. Indeed, they all have guns and you might very well get shot.
Whereas we in Britain just walk in the fields in our daily lives, I never in 25 years saw any sort of access to 'private' farmland in the USA. And yet, up till 1776, the Native Americans were walking everywhere. What happened to their paths and their rights?
