Notes From My Knapsack 4-02-06
Jeff Gill

Ho! For the Open Road. . .

Looking up a reference for something I was writing elsewhere, I started nosing around in C.S. Lewis’ autobiography, "Surprised by Joy."
This is a book I’ve read a number of times, but after finding the quote I needed, what kept me thinking this springtime was the description of hiking through the countryside.
Every Spring, with a number of friends who enjoyed the conviviality and adventure (but that rarely included J.R.R. Tolkien, author of "The Lord of the Rings," as he only liked talking to people if he could look directly at them, which is dangerous on the trail to say the very least)
Hiking is an activity well suited to this season, whether in England or Licking County, with the chill of winter far from gone, but the long views through the barren trees still available. You can keep warm with a steady pace, and the prospect of growth and blossom is starting to show for the discerning eye.
What isn’t comparable is the where and how of Jack Lewis’ gang of rambling scholars went for their spring jaunt. They didn’t follow official hiking trails (sorry, Bob Pond!), and the railroads were still in service and busy. They literally hiked cross-country, following rural roads and occasionally crossing fields and pastures.
The planning of the route was half the fun, it seems, not only to figure out where to go but perhaps more importantly where to stop, finding villages with likely pubs where the ale, porter, and hard cider would surely quench a hearty thirst.
This is where the image breaks down to the modern American midwestern eye. Can you imagine walking from Hebron to Marne to Utica on the shoulder of township roads, stopping for a late breakfast, early lunch, tea (well, an afternoon snack), and early dinner before reaching . . . maybe a B&B up by Bladensburg could fill in for an inn, but still.
Obviously, the advent of more and faster private motor vehicles make for most of the shift. In the 1920’s and 30’s and 40’s the British countryside was still largely dominated by horsepower and the stray Model A, with an infrequent Jaguar of the well-to-do audible miles and minutes before it came roaring at, say, 50 miles an hour, tops.
Changes in agriculture, too, make for more fences and less use of lanes in the spaces on maps between the paved roads. But it is interesting to think about how differently rural life looks through the year to someone who has sauntered through the middle of farm production; sympathy and understanding are surely helped by contact and exposure, from agriculture to the academy, between farmers and fellow citizens.
To which the wise reader will retort with the two all-purpose argument enders of "theft and liability." No doubt. So we rule out the shoulder of the racetracks known as secondary roads, and farm fields in general.
What you could do is chart a path through quiet communities going from one public house to another, however you crossed the countryside, but you wouldn’t get a beer, local or imported. Today’s pub is usually named for the innkeeper of old or a family member, or a sign of the royal family, right? Like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, or Burger King.
There are a few establishments around Licking County where the Oxford Sauntering Society might feel at home if they came back and found a path to connect them on foot. They may not serve fermented beverages of any sort, grain or grape-based, but each of these seems like the kind of spot where a weary traveller might unwind and converse peacefully with a crew of merry fellow venturers.
Kirkersville has the Village Tavern on the National Road (proud home of the Galusha Anderson Society), Hebron with the Hometown Deli and Lancer’s Inn, and on down the road to Jacksontown’s Jacktown Pub . . . hey, a pub!
If you didn’t mind the traffic, if you could navigate your wandering way to downtown Newark and the Natoma or out west a bit to Yesterday’s Pub (there’s another).
I’ve long appreciated the biscuits and gravy up north at Utica’s Pioneer Restaurant, and the east end of the county offers the MidTown Diner in Frazeysburg, while way out west is Johnstown’s Main Street Café.
Many have celebrated the return of Pataskala’s Nutcracker Restaurant, and any ramble of mine is a success when it concludes at Granville’s epicenter, Aladdin’s, with the magic Yum-yum. But I’ll give the downstairs Tavern at the Buxton Inn points for atmosphere, and the Granville Inn for sheer taste.
So the idea of a hiking week is possible, as are the kind of stopping places to sit and relax and converse and cogitate with fine food (beverages may vary). What we can’t do is put them together, at least without risking life and limb, stepping across deer carcasses and deceased possum entrails, careful not to walk on the broken glass, either.
Ideas, anyone?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; sing him a hiking song to the tune of disciple@voyager.net.