Walk in the Cotswolds

[jbeegoode]

I certainly prefer this system to no trespassing signs and public blockages. The old trail that bisected my property now is in the middle of my livingroom. I build a nature trail around the house for walkers and horses. People just stopped using the right of way that I gifted. I never had to put up the sign stating, "Warning, you may encounter friendly naked gun toting witches ahead," something to the effect, "Come on through, but mind your own business."

Another 10 miles freely! Glad to hear of us getting out and about. I'll be using a certain trail more frequently this season, but can't write about it over and over, without being redundant. Guess that's what "How was your month" is for.
Jbee

[eyesup]

I was out yesterday on a 14-mile hike that was more field than woodland, and aside from a couple of outlying farms and short stretches of road, plus one village (where there was a stop for BEER) the whole trip was possible naked.

Take a look at these landscapes and try and guess how much I would enjoy a stop for a BEER along the way.

I am envious!

No BEER heer!	ummm, nope, no BEER heer either!	still none! Dang!

. . . still lookin’


I guess water will have to do!

Isn’t the German word for wood or forest also ‘wald’? Which is likely how it came to be in Old English!

Duane

[eyesup]

"Come on through, but mind your own business."

Did they continue using it or just stop using it after you moved in? In America the concept of privacy is pretty strong. I can see why most would hesitate.

So, you are naked gardening and someone rambles through. What then?

Invite them to have a seat for a cup of tea or coffee?

Since you would be on private land, and they are on government protected land, who has jurisdiction? The town, the county, the national government?

If it is a government controlled byway, does that qualify as being seen by the public? Very odd!
Good question Jbee.

Duane

[JOhnGw]

Answering that set of questions, Duane, could keep a team of lawyers in luxury for years.

[Peter S]

Our footpaths aren't government owned or protected in the way I think those terms would be understood in the US. They're rights of way in common law, and they're public simply because they've been there so long. The law says they can't be diverted without a lot of legal hassle, and owners of the land they cross aren't supposed to interfere with them in any way. County councils have the responsibility to look after them - which in practice means mapping them and telling off landowners who plough them up or block them, but in real life they're very low priority for cash-strapped councils. Most of the care and maintenance gets done through voluntary groups, such as the Ramblers' Association, who enjoy walking the paths so have a vested interest in keeping them open.

If you buy a property with a public footpath across it, whether it's a farm or a back garden, you have to keep the path open, even if that means people walking past your back window. There have been cases in the past where house builders didn't do their homework and footpaths have actually passed through houses, and you can bet there were local walkers who exercised their rights!

To go back to the original conundrum, if you were naked gardening and a footpath came through your garden, I don't think either side would have cause for complaint. Equally, I don't think it's ever been tested.

[nuduke]

They're rights of way in common law, and they're public simply because they've been there so long

And then there's riparian drainage law!  Don't get me started Pete!

John

[jbeegoode]

Water rights, damming up the creek? That sounds like the old rancher, cowboy stories, the Corps of Engineers, and well water. Big deal around here, that stifles lots of rambling and enjoyment of nature.
Jbee

[rrfalcon]

For an amusing, fictional, but accurate take on New Mexico water law, read a  book from the 1970s or 80s - "The Milagro Beanfield War". Part of it describes an old Mexican/Indian farmer casually digging his way across a new yuppie tennis court to open up the acequia needed to irrigate his beanfield. The irrigation ditch is part of his property rights, and the suburban yuppie had no right to fill it in even though it was on the yuppie's property. It's a funny book with a good take on the conflict between old-time land owners and nouveau-riche suburbanites in New Mexico.

[jbeegoode]

Loved the movie. Maybe I should put the book on the reading list.
Jbee

[eyesup]

The irrigation ditch is part of his property rights, and the suburban yuppie had no right to fill it in even though it was on the yuppie's property.

Water rights and water wars have probably caused as much conflict as gold. There are surface rights and sub-surface rights. City dwellers not familiar with the old systems do get confused and frustrated when they encounter it. But you should do your homework. See my previous post here.

There are land owners that still own rights over a century old and they defend them aggressively. In a desert, water is life.

Duane

[jbeegoode]

In the movie, it was an aggressive greedy belligerent real-estate developer. The paradise to a parking lot type.
Jbee

[eyesup]

My wife and I were discussing recent developments in politics and naturally the subject drifted to tribalism. We talked about how small groups and communities have always suffered when coming in contact with explorers from empires.

I remarked that when the Europeans landed in the north eastern parts of America they were able to take advantage of the tribes here. The reasons are many but one in particular didn’t have anything to do with technology. The native people back then did not have the European concept of ownership of the land. It belonged to the people that lived on it, not to an individual.

They took care of it and lived in and on it because they believed that they were a part of it. When they traded for those trinkets on Manhattan they did not understand the idea of buying land. This was a concept they did not know or understand. Theirs was a concept the Europeans did not know or understand.

Two groups talking at cross purposes. And here we are today.

Duane

[John P]

You have to remember that when English colonists landed in Massachusetts in 1621, they were following a series of European visits which had sometimes carried disease to the Indians. In the preceding few years, there was a devastating epidemic (smallpox and/or something else) which essentially destroyed the society of the coastal Indians. The "Pilgrims" gave thanks to their God that He had presented them with so much good farm land with nobody to dispute it! (And clearly demonstrated who was fit to live there--manifest destiny in its early stages.) The Indians who remained were willing to trade, and with so few of them left, at first there was no reason to argue about land rights.

Here's a short history of one of the last Indian leaders, Nanepashemet. I've mentioned hiking in Middlesex Fells, where there's a "Nanepashemet Path"; there's also a historic marker near the location of the fort where he made his last stand against a rival tribe in 1619. Perhaps by then, he'd already lost most of the warriors who could have helped him fight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanepashemet

[jbeegoode]

My early education was growing up in Virginia and Europe at an American school, except a couple of years in New Mexico. Consequently, I was seeped in Civil War and Revolutionary War history. There wasn't much about the Indians, but the usual myths and growing corn, etc. in school. It was all about white colonists. I've casually picked up just a few things since on Eastern Native Americans.

There was much more of each American regions tribes taught in third grade in New Mexico, where we would find Indian pottery shards while at play. There was that time when some a bozo in the Little League, slid into FIRST base and uncovered human remains, turning the ballpark fields into archeological excavations of a burial ground for the rest if the season. So, there was the limited foundation of knowledge for me.

Residing in the southwest, for all of these years, I'm orientated to the local history and culture and the great plains where I have some ancestry. So, to read of documented historical information is a surprise and a treat. It is a very different place back east, but when I read such things, I am awash in associations sights, smells and running in the forests and tide waters as a kid, imagining what it was like. Fun. Gotta get back east again and spend some time exploring anew, reminiscing and reacquainting...naked when possible. I do that out here; I hang out naked in ruins, trails and habitat and project.

There is also interest in the world of my white family arriving in the east from 1642 and greater interaction through to the revolution through family stories. Thanks for the link to play with this morning. Piece by piece, it is fun.

Individual rights, and written documents may have been foreign, not possessing land may be a spiritual concept for some, but I have to question sources like Eyesup's. I'm jus' sayin', and definitely am not taking a stance, but it would seem that there is a strong dependence on this idea that all Native Americans didn't know how to own land. I do see documentation and circumstantial surmising, suggesting that there was a strong tribal possession concept in the understanding of the concept of ownership of land. There is a strong indication of a concept of being of and a part of the Earth, for many, much more humble than the Europeans. This not possessing or controlling land makes sense in the plains in a nomadic state of say chasing Buffalo, but back east, considering diversity and dense populations, agriculture, I gotta have some doubts of the accuracy. So, an individual claim to possession as ownership would conflict, but tribal, group territories and trading trinkets for control could be in the realm of understanding for both parties. Delineation of rivers and mountains existed.

And then for example, my ancestors moved into the plains in the early 1830's and built sod homes, raising grain, which they turned into bread, which they then traded with the locals for meat. They didn't own the land, but there was a "my stuff and your stuff," a place to be without hassle and there was abundance.
Jbee

 

[eyesup]

I have read and heard from different sources that the exchanges in biological cultures that resulted from the 1st encounters between natives and Europeans was significant on both sides. But, as John says, more so on the American side. They were unable to recover from it. Aside from the devastating effects of smallpox in the Americas, I have read that syphilis was carried back to Europe by Columbus’ crew. So there were terrible costs on both sides from initial contact.

We watched a show on PBS years ago essentially made from Jared Diamond’s, ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’, that highlighted how western civilization was so much more prepared for exploration than any other on the planet. You could make the argument that infectious diseases brought here from Europe would probably qualify today as genocide.

World explorers. From Indonesia, Phoenicia and Europe, it’s been going on a long time.

Duane