Beginnings

On the absurdity, and necessity, of walking in a technological age.

The first big question you face, hiking the Mountains-to-Sea Trail in stages, is where to begin. Through-hiking, you start at one end or the other. I have, probably, a hundred options. Any five-to-ten-mile stretch from any trailhead with parking, out and back, will do. In practical terms it doesn't matter, but it feels important. It's symbolic.

It dawned on me that I could actually start from my house.

My extended neighborhood in Raleigh is pretty nice for walking if I don't actually want to go anywhere. If I'm just “taking a walk,” I can meander for five or six miles without crossing any major arteries. I pass a couple of mini-parks and an interesting variety of residential streets; I can drink a beer, eat a doughnut, or buy an overpriced cup of coffee. At the far margin are a few strip-mall restaurants and an antiques shop. Buying groceries is another matter. That requires navigating five lanes of traffic, sidewalks within arm's reach of speeding cars, and pedestrian crossings that drivers may or may not respect. It isn't any better on a bicycle. (Probably worse.)

The city does, however, have an extensive greenway system. If it doesn't actually make the city walkable or even bikeable, it at least offers considerable space where one can walk or bike, not to mention it protects urban streams. And there is a trailhead a mile from my house, tucked behind the ballfields of the Catholic school. I walk past that trailhead a couple of times a week. From there the greenway runs nine miles east along a creek to the Neuse River, where it meets the Neuse River Trail — which is part of the MST.

Why not, then, start out on bike instead of on foot? Ride to the greenway, head for the river, pick up the MST eastbound and bike south to Clayton? Twenty-seven miles one way, a nice ride, with plenty of time to stop and look around. I had an idea of asking my wife to meet me in Clayton for a burger after work and save me the ride back. If I started on my birthday, I could call it a birthday present.

Why not? Sewage, that's why not. Part of the trail to Clayton is closed for sewer construction, and the detour is unsafe and not recommended unless you're through-hiking and just have to get through.

Could I ride westbound, instead? The Neuse River Trail follows the river north to Falls Lake, another easily manageable ride. But there's sewer construction just north of Anderson Point Park, too, and the detour is two and a half miles one way on city streets—not too far on a bicycle, but it seems an inauspicious way to start. Better to do that section next year, when the trail reopens.

Meanwhile, just a couple of weeks ago, part of the greenway trail to the river closed... for more sewer construction. Again, there's a detour. Again, it sort of spoils the plan.

I can still say that I have walked and/or biked from my house to the MST. Since I am taking the thing piecemeal, I guess that's good enough.

But I cannot escape this feeling that I am boxed in. By cars, by traffic, and also, now, by sewage. Every year brings more houses and apartments to this city, and every year housing prices go up, in defiance of quaint notions about supply and demand. Meanwhile, houses need toilets, and toilets need sewers, and sewers need excavation, and excavation tears up roads and greenways — and while construction crews always manage to leave a lane open for cars, they close the greenway completely. The greenway being merely recreation, and thus dispensable.

My frustration isn't that what's merely recreational is dispensable. My frustration is that walking is considered merely recreational. We do not, as a society, value getting anywhere under one's own power. Indeed, we do everything possible to discourage it. I can imagine a greenway system designed for transportation, not merely recreation; one that put walking and bicycling on at least a par with driving as a means of getting about town. But I live in a city designed for cars, in a society that has made cars indispensable. We want transportation to be easy, to be frictionless; and so we work three months out of every twelve to pay for the privilege, endure traffic jams and risk deadly accidents.

In that context walking across the state, even a little at a time, holds a certain contrarian appeal. Or at least an anachronistic appeal: it’s hardly a new idea. Indians and fur traders did it, along the Great Trading Path. Drovers did it to get their livestock to markets. Jude Law did it to get home after the Civil War. Bindlestiffs hopped freight trains for convenience, not because the roads weren't safe. That was then. Now the Great Trading Path is Interstate 85, and you're apt to wind up as Edward Abbey's Brave Cowboy, whose escape from the injustice of official justice ends when he has to cross an interstate highway on horseback and (spoiler) gets smashed by a truck.

Characters in Edward Abbey novels are, as a rule, better inspirations than role models, and I am not planning to take on any tractor-trailers. Where the MST can't take a footpath, it mostly follows back roads. But I appreciate the fact that it does not entirely avoid civilization, that it runs through the heart of the densely paved post-industrial Piedmont, through a few small towns and the skirts of a couple of major cities. One of the things I enjoy about Asheville is seeing the through-hikers off the Appalachian Trail walking up the highway into town. It's the intersection with the urban and the modern that makes the trip symbolic rather than merely recreational. There’s no use in being countercultural if you don’t actually counter the culture.

And so I find that I have argued myself into the opposite of the position I began with. To start a 1200-mile journey on foot with a detour through busy city streets is perfect.

Two cheers, anyhow, for Raleigh's greenways. I'll reserve the third for the memory of, and the hope for, a walkable world.

Notes and further reading

On working three months of every twelve to pay for your car: The Bureau of Transportation Statistics estimates the average annual cost of owning and operating a motor vehicle at between $10 and $11 thousand dollars and the number of vehicles per U.S household as 1.9, while median household income in the United States is $70,784. I leave the calculations as an exercise to the reader.

You can learn a little bit more about the Great Trading Path from NCPedia.

Bindlestiff is a great alternative term for a hobo, the bindle being the sack he carried over his shoulder and a stiff being... you know, like a “working stiff.” My favorite novel about bindlestiffs is Joe Hill, by Wallace Stegner.

If I were to take on a tractor-trailer, I’d do it with a peashooter.

For discussion

Would you rather be a drover, a deserter, or a bindlestiff? If none of the above, what equally disreputable occupation would you prefer?