Land by Simon Winchester

I’ve been reading the above book on my kindle. It is all about land and how people use, define, and defend land all over the world. Very interesting; one part really sparked my interest. It was about public access to the private land in some areas like England and Scotland and other European countries. It turns out that in many countries there is a public right to private land for the purpose of walking, and some other non-intensive uses. That kind of blew my mind because here in the States it is really simple: If the landowner doesn’t want you on the property and you trespass they can call the police and have you taken off the land. That’s what I have grown up with and have followed my whole life.

I sparked up the interwebs to read some more about it. (No, no AI used in this post, in case you are wondering.) The right to access in England, Wales, and Scotland, originated with the concept of common land where people could graze their animals, cut firewood, and walk about from their farms to the village or other areas. All those old paths and trails are now enshrined in laws passed in the early 2000’s. I found an article about it here for England and Wales and here for Scotland.

Reading about it I was struck how the laws depend on reasonable people doing reasonable things. Your right to ramble does not give you the right to trample crops or go across somebody’s garden or too close to the house. Lots of authority is given to local authorities to straighten out conflicts. We don’t have that in the states. We look for the loopholes where we can drive a semitruck through a mousehole.

I’ve read lots of blog posts by Brits about their hiking across the country and lots of the trails they used went across private land and always kind of wondered how that works. I guess it works pretty well.

I think literally 99.9% of the trails I have hiked on have been either public land, or publicly accessible privately owned land owned by something like the Nature Conservancy who have trails but restrict access.

A trail open to the public on the JT Nichol Wildlife Preserve in southeast Oklahoma. Owned by the Nature Conservancy.

But wait, it is not that simple. From what I understand Americans have a right of access on beaches. Generally everything oceanward from the vegetation land is public property. Now getting to the beaches is another unless there is deeded public access. We got Orange Beach, Alabama on the Gulf of Mexico a lot. There are landowners who try and claim the beach as well. They’ll come down and tell people to get off. From what I understand, when push comes to shove they back off.

I don’t think we are going to have a big movement toward public access here in the States. Too many monied vested interests. The opposite is happening in many states where wealthy people want to buy public land and keep people off of it. I’m of the mind that we need more public lands and access, not less.

A county trail in Arizona along the Little Colorado River.

Heather and Logan on one of our hikes in New Mexico on Forest Service land.

I’m fascinated by the differences in lands and legal systems among the various countries that make up our world.

I am linking to “Through My Lens”