Germany integrates outdoor activity into its lifestyle more than the United States does — walking paths go everywhere

© 2017 Peter Free

 

01 November 2017

 

 

Theme — German walking paths are "everywhere"

 

Here is the beginning of a path outside the small, west southwestern town of Mehlingen:

 

Photograph of typical German walking path, this one just outside Mehlingen.

 

Impressed again

 

I'm visiting this quadrant of Germany, four months after ending a three year stint living in it. Now stationed in south Texas, I am again appreciating how easy Germany makes it to get away from being confined to public roads (as we are in most American states).

 

Here, you just hoof it to the edge of town, and there will be a number of paved or dirt paths that take you through woods or agricultural land. These web-like networks are open to the public, as well as to the farmers and loggers. They usually begin widely paved and then taper down to dirt.

 

You see a mix of young and old walkers (often with well-behaved dogs), runners, bicyclists, agricultural equipment and the occasional car, usually belonging to a farm family accessing the land they live on.

 

Germans are outside in all weather and usage goes through the seasons, pretty much without interruption for snow and ice.

 

In southern Germany (as in Austria and Switzerland), if you are in a car on rural highways, you will see inconspicuous parking areas with flashes of yellow path signs. In the latter two nations, these signs show distances or walking times. These are often substantial. No wimps here.

 

Germans wander outside dressed in whatever they're already wearing. Unlike Americans, there is no emphasis on changing into athletic or hiking attire. These folk (of all ages) will go anywhere, no matter how seemingly risky the terrain would seem to be. There is not the American tendency to highlight obvious danger with signs and fences.

 

 

The moral? — Part of the reason many Europeans are more environmentally aware than Americans . . .

 

. . . is how easily their societies allow one to maintain familiarity with surrounding environments.

 

In contrast, the US emphasis on private property (to the exclusion of shared community access) does the planet no environmental consciousness favors.

 

Coming from Colorado and Wyoming, I have been spoiled by the tracts of public land in both states. In most of the rest of the U.S., I feel as if I'm in prison. Germanic Europe has been a refreshing relief, long inhabited though these lands have been.