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This episode is brought to you by Starlight. Tonight, we'll read a short story by John Burrows called The Exileration of the Road that we first read in 2020. is taken from a compilation titled titled The Footpath Way and Anthology for Walkers, published in 1911. John Burrows was an American nature essayist, active in the U.S. Conservation Movement. In the words of his biographer, Burrow's special identity was less that of a scientific naturalist than that of a literary naturalist with a duty to record his own unique perceptions of the natural world. The result was a body of work whose resonance with the tone of its cultural moment explains both its popularity at that time and its relative obscurity since. Burrow's accompanied many personalities of the time in his later years, including Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Ford, who gave him an automobile and Thomas Edison.

According to Ford, John Burrows, Edison, and I made several vagabond trips together. We went in motor caravans and slept under canvas. Let's get cozy. Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed. Now take a few deep breaths. The exhilaration of the road. Occasionally, on the sidewalk, amid the dapper, swiftly moving high-heeled boots and gaiters, I catch a glimpse of the naked human foot. Nimbley, it scuffs along, the toes spread, the sides flatten, the heel protrudes, it grasps the curbing, or bends to the form of the uneven surfaces, a thing sensuous and alive that seems to take cognizance of whatever it touches or passes. How primitive and uncivil it looks in such company, a real barbarian in the parlor. We are so unused to the human anatomy, to simple, unadorned nature, that it looks a little repulsive, but it is beautiful for all that. Though it be an unwashed foot, it shall be exalted. It is thing of life, a mid-leather, A free spirit amid cramped, a wild bird, amid caged, and athlete, amid consumptives. It is the symbol of my order, the order of walkers, that unhampered, vitally playing piece of anatomy is the type of the pedestrian man returned to first principles and direct contact an intercourse with the earth and the elements. His faculties, unsheathed, his mind, plastic, his body, toughened, his heart, light, his soul, dilated. While those cramped and distorted members in the calf and kid are the unfortunate wretches doomed to carriages and cushions. I'm not going to advocate the disuse of boots and shoes, or the abandoning of the improved modes of travel, but I am going to brag as lustily as I can on behalf of the pedestrian, and show how all the shining angels second, and accompany the man who goes afoot, while all the dark spirits are ever looking out for a chance to ride. When I see the discomforts that able-bodied American men will put up with rather than go a mile or half a mile on foot, the abuses they will tolerate and encourage. Crouting the street, car on a little fall in the temperature, or the appearance of an inch or two of snow, packing up to overflowing, dangling to the strap, treading on each other's toes, breathing each other's breaths, crushing everyone else, hanging by tooth and nail to a square inch of the platform, imparalling their

limbs. I think the communist tramp in the street has good reason of the rare privilege of of going a foot.

Indeed, a race that neglects or despises this primitive gift that fears the touch of this soil that has no footpaths, no community of ownership in the land which they imply, Loans off the walker as a trespasser, that knows no way but the highway, the carriage way, that forgets the style, the footbridge, that even ignores the rights of the pedestrian in the public road, providing no escape for him but in the ditch or up the bank.

Shakespeare makes the chief qualification of the walker a Maryheart. Jog on, jog on the footpath way, and merely hint the style of.

Maryheart goes all the day, your sad tires in a mile. The human body is a steed that goes freest and longest under a light rider, and the lightest of all riders is a cheerful heart. Nor sad, or morose, or embittered, or preoccupied heart settles heavily into the saddle, and the poor beast, the body, breaks down the first mile. Indeed, the heaviest thing in the world is a heavy heart. Next to that, the most burdensome to the walker is a heart not in perfect sympathy and accord with the body, a reluctant or unwilling heart. The horse and and writer, must not only both be willing to go the same way, but the rider must lead the way and infuse his own lightness and eagerness into the steed. Herein is no doubt our trouble and one reason of the decay of the noble art in this country. We are unwilling walkers. We are not innocent and simple-hearted enough to enjoy a walk. We have fallen from that state of grace which capacity to enjoy a walk implies. It cannot be said that as a people we are so positively sad or morose or melancholic, is that we are vacant of the sportiveness of animal spirits that characterized our ancestors. And that springs from full and harmonious life, a sound heart in accord with a sound body. A man must invest himself near at hand and in common things and be content with a steady and moderate return, if he would know the blessedness of a cheerful heart and the sweetness of a walk over the round earth. This is the lesson the American has yet to learn, capability of of amusement on a low-key. He expects rapid and extraordinary returns. He would make the very elemental laws per usury. He has nothing to invest in a walk. It is too slow, too cheap. We crave the astonishing, the exciting, the far away, and do not know the highways of the gods when we see them. Always a sign of the decay. If I say to my neighbor, come with me.

I have great wonders to show you. He pricks up his ears and comes forth with. But when I take him on the hills under the full blaze of the sun, or along the country road, our footsteps lighted by the moon and stars, and say to him, behold, these are the wonders, these are the circuits of the gods. This is we now tread a morning star. He feels defrauded. And as if I had played him a trick, and yet nothing less than dilation and enthusiasm like this is the badge of the master walker. If we are not sad, we are care-worn, heard, discontented, mortgaging the present for the promise of the future. If we take a walk, it is as we take a prescription with about the same relish and with about the same purpose. And the more the fatigue the greater are faith in the virtue

of the medicine, of those gleesome saunters over the hills and spring, or those sallies of the body and winter, those excursions into space when the foot strikes fire every step.

When the air tastes like a new and finer mixture, when we accumulate force and gladness as we go along. When the sight of objects by the roadside and of the fields and woods pleases more than pictures or than all the art in the world, those ten or twelve mile dashes that are but the wit and affluence of the corporal powers. such such diversion and open road entertainment, I say most of us know very little. I notice with astonishment that at our fashionable watering places, nobody walks. That of all those vast crowds of health seekers and lovers of country air, you can never catch one in the fields or woods, or guilty of trudging along the country road with dust on his shoes and suntan on his hands and face. The soul amusement seems to be to eat and dress and sit about the hotels and glare at each other. The men look bored, the women look tired, and all seem to sigh, Oh Lord, what shall we do to be happy and not be vulgar? Quite different from our British cousins across the water, who have plenty of amusement and hilarity, spending most of the time at their watering places in the open air, strolling, picnicking, boating, climbing, briskly walking, apparently with little fear of suntan. is indeed astonishing with what ease and hilarity the English walk. To an American, it seems a kind of infatuation. When Dickens was in this country, I imagine the aspirants to the honor of a walk with him were not numerous. In a pedestrian tour of England by an American, I read that after breakfast with the independent minister, he walked with us for six miles out of town upon our road. Three little boys and girls, the youngest six years old, also accompanied us. They were romping and rambling about all the while, and their morning walk must have been as much as 15 miles, but they thought nothing of it. And when we parted, we're apparently as fresh as when they started, and very low to return. I fear also. The American is becoming disqualified for the art of walking by a falling off in the size of his foot. He cherishes and cultivates this part of the anatomy, and apparently thinks his taste are to be inferred from its diminutive size.

A small trim foot well-booted or gated is the national vanity. English pedestrian, no doubt, has the advantage of us in the matter of climate. For notwithstanding the traditional gloom of English skies, they have in that country none of those relaxing sinking days of which we have so many here and which seem especially trying to the Constitution. Days which withdraw all support from back and lines and render walking of all things burdensome. There is this acclimat of which it has been said that it invites men abroad more days in the year and more hours in the day than that of any other country. Then their land is threaded with paths which invite the walker and which are scarcely less important than the highways. I heard of a surly nobleman near London who took it into his head so close a footpath that passed through his estate near his house and opened another one a little farther off. The pedestrians objected, the matter got into the courts. And after the aristocrat lost protracted litigation, the path could not be closed or moved. The memory of man ran not to the time when there was not a footpath there, and every pedestrian should have the right of way there still. I remember the pleasure I had in the path that connects Stratford on Avon with Shottery, Shakespeare's path when he went courting in half-way. By the king's highway, the distance is somewhat farther, so there is a well-worn path along the hedgerows and through the meadows and turnip patches. The traveler in it has the privilege of crossing the railroad track, an unusual privilege in England, and one denies to the Lord in his carriage, who must either go over or under it. It is a privilege, is it not to be allowed the forbidden, even if it be the privilege of being run over by the engine? And strolling over the south--ounds too, I was delighted to find that where the hill was steepest, some benefactor of the order of walkers had made notches in the sword so that the foot could bite the better and firmer. The path became a kind of stairway, which I have no doubt the plowman respected. When you see an English country church withdrawn, secluded out of the reach of wheels, standing amid grassy graves and surrounded by noble trees, approached by paths and shaded lanes, you appreciate more than ever this beautiful habit of the people. Only those that knows how to use feet and hold footpath sacred could put such a charm of privacy and humility into such a structure. I think I should be tempted to go to church myself if I saw all my neighbors

starting off across the fields or along paths that led to such charmed spots. And was sure I would not be jostled, or run over by the rival chariots. I think this is what hails our religion. Humility and devoutness of heart. Leave one when he lays by his walking shoes and walking clothes. And sets out for church, drawn by something. Indeed, I think it would be tantamount to an astonishing revival of religion if the people would all walk to church on Sunday and walk home again, think how the stones would preach to them by the wayside. The Walker does not need a large territory.

When you get into a railway car, you want a continent. The man in his carriage requires a township, but a Walker like Thoreau finds as much and more along the shores of Walden pond. The former, as it were, has merely time to glance at the headings of the chapters, while the latter need not misalign, and Theroux reads between the lines. Then the walker has the privilege of the fields, the woods, the hills, the byways. The apples by the roadside offer him, and the berries, and the spring of water, and the friendly shelter, and if the weather is cold, she eats the frost grapes, and the persimmons, or even the white-meeted turnip snatched from the field she passed through with incredible relish. a foot and in the open road. One has a fair start in life at last. There is no hindrance now. Let her put her best foot forward. She is on the broadest humane plane. This is on the levelest, humane plane.

This is on the level of all the great laws and heroic deeds.

From this platform, she is eligible to any good fortune.

She was sighing for the golden age. Let her walk to it. Every step brings her nearer. The youth of the world is but a few days journey distant. Indeed, I know persons who think they have walked back to that fresh, a four-time, of a single bright Sunday in autumn or early spring. Before noon, they felt its hairs upon their cheeks, and by nightfall on the banks of some quiet stream, or along some path in the wood, or on some hilltop. I think if I could walk through a country, I should not only see many things and have adventures that I should otherwise miss, but that I should come into relations with that country at first hand and with the women and men in it in a way that would afford the deepest satisfaction. Hence I envy the good fortune of all walkers, and feel like joining myself to every tramp that comes along. I am jealous of the clergyman I read about the other day, who footed it from Edenburg to London, as poor F.E. Dean did, carrying her shoes in her hand most of the way, and over the ground that rugged Ben Johnson strode, larking it to Scotland so long ago. I read with longing of the pedestrian feats of college youths so light-hearted with their core shoes on their feet and their knapsacks on their backs. It would have been a good draw of the rugged cup to have walked with Wilson, the ornthologist, deserted by his companions from Niagara to

Philadelphia through the snows of winter. I almost wish that I had been born to the career of a German mechanic, that I might have had that delicious, adventurous year of wandering over my country before I settled down to work. I think how much richer and firmer-grained life would be to me if I could journey a foot through Florida and Texas. or follow the windings of Yellowstone, or stroll through Oregon, or browse for a season about Canada. the bright, inspiring days of autumn. I only want the time and the companion to walk back to the natal spot, the family nest across two states and into the mountains of a third. adventures we we would have, by the way, what hard pulls, what prospects from hills, what spectacles we would behold of night and day, what passages with dogs, what glances, what peeps into windows, what characters we should fall in with,

and how seasoned and hearty we should arrive at our destination.

It is another proof of how walking brings out the true character of someone. You will not be long in finding your companion out. All the disguises will fall away. His pores open his character and it is late bear. His deepest and most private self will come to the top. It matters little whom you ride with, so he be not a pigbogget. For both of you will, very likely. Settle down closer and firmer in your reserve, shaken down like a measure of corn by the jolting as the journey proceeds. But walking is a more vital co-partnership. The relation is a closer and more sympathetic one and you do not feel like walking ten paces with a stranger without speaking to him. Hence the vistudiousness of the professional walker in choosing or admitting a companion, and hence the truth of a remark of Emerson that you will generally fare better to take your dog than to invite your neighbor. Your dog is a true pedestrian, and your neighbor is very likely a small politician. The dog enters thoroughly into the spirit of the enterprise. He is not indifferent or preoccupied. He is constantly sniffing adventure, laps at every spring. Persons who find themselves spent in a short walk to the market, or the post office, or to do a little shopping wonder how it is that their pedestrian friends can come with so many wary miles and not fall down from sheer exhaustion. Ignoring of the fact that the Walker is a kind of projectile that drops far or near according to the expansive force of the motive that set it in motion. And that is easy enough to regulate the charge according to the distance to be traversed. If I am loaded to carry only one mile and am in compel to walk three, I generally feel more fatigued than if I had walked under six under the proper impetus of pre-adjusted resolution. In other words, the will, whatever it be, is capable of being wound up to different degrees of tension, so that one may walk all day, nearly as easy as half that time if he is prepared beforehand.

He knows his task and he measures and distributes his powers accordingly.

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