For Ed. You were a terrible human being with a few good things to say. For that, you get a big middle finger and a subtle thank you. Don’t let it go to your head.
I imagine this will be controversial, but if it is not, then I have wasted my time writing. Wayne County has too many boardwalks. This county’s parks have unlucky hikers and they’re guided to points of interest that aren’t very interesting.
You can’t experience anything meaningful from the confines of a boardwalk. I know, it’s a bold claim and I probably only have the ghost of Edward Abbey on my side, but please be patient. Boardwalks give us the same experience as an interstate. It isn’t that there are McDonald’s and Pilot signs rocketing into the sky above Brown’s Bog, rather they are human constructions plopped down on the earth so we can get somewhere as quickly as possible. For a trucker, they have easy access to Denver, Des Moines, and Dallas. For a visitor to Brown’s Bog, it is that shrinking pond with the pitcher plants which plays the role of terminus. But forget our adventure for a moment. I want to know if that trucker really experiences their journey. I want to know if that incomprehensible blur of corny countryside ever morphs back into something comprehensible. As a trucker’s eyes barrel down the interstate at 70+ miles per hour, do they ever stop to eat in those rural diners where locals tell tales of their neck of the woods? I am doubtful. Our understanding of the world is only as wide as the path we travel.
How deprived we are! At the bog, we cannot feel the peat until we have free feet, jumping up and down on the face of our planet. It is not until all boardwalks are made absent that we may remove beer cans for a muddy Medal of Honor or have caterpillars crawl up our legs. These joys are not possible on the wood. I like my trails jagged, unkempt, and free. I want to feel the squish of summer rain as it seeps into the soil, or hop over oak logs that have given themselves back to the earth. Give a hiker a challenge, and they will reap a reward. Give them pools in which mosquitoes lay their eggs. Give them birds to follow into darker groves of trees. I cannot see moles burrowing the soil if this chemically treated wood removes me from the sight. I want to find the diners off the beaten path, where the trees tell us history and the bird sing sonnets.
Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe I was talking to Carl too much. Maybe I’m wrong. I’m saying this as calmly as I can so not to become like Abbey, a bearded asshole, which shaving my face won’t solve. All I want is less separation. I can’t stop and smell the roses when a boardwalk stands between. And if a boardwalk is the only way I can experience those woods or that bog, so be it. I say, tear it up anyways, I’ll just stay home. Nature will go on, if not better, without me.
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