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 over as quickly as possible, since I can only guess how a middle-aged woman in such an ungainly position must look. What I need, I was thinking today, is a stile, “a wooden device used to cross a wall or a fence on a walking path.” (I found that definition and a lovely blog post on stiles here: http://www.jedword.com/2010/10/16/stile-a-wooden-device-used-to-cross-a-fence-or-wall-on-a-walking-path/ )

The absence of stiles — in fact, the very absurdity of even imagining them here — is proof of how the suburban world, despite its paved trails and paths, is not designed for walking. It is built for the automobile. The 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 heart I’m ambling from Upper to Lower Slaughter in a fine English mist.