One of my walking routes requires that I hop a fence. I’m not trespassing (though I’ve been known to in search of a good path). But I am saving myself a few steps by clambering across the fence rather than looping around it. I climb as quickly as possible, since I can only guess how a middle-aged woman doing this must look. What I need, I thought today, is a stile, a wooden device used to cross a wall or a fence and found predominately in the British Isles.

The absence of stiles — in fact, the absurdity of even imagining them here — is proof of how the suburban world is not designed for walking. Yes, there are paved paths and trails, and I appreciate them. But the trails peter out randomly. Or they run into fences.

In short, this world is built for the automobile. Roads are wide and car-scaled, and many neighborhoods (ours included) have no sidewalks. It is not the English countryside, with narrow lanes, paths from village to village, and stiles across the hedgerows. It is fenced and paved, every walker for herself.

Still, you can’t keep a walker from dreaming. I may be strolling down a suburban street, but in my imagination I’m ambling from Upper to Lower Slaughter in a fine English mist.