It started with simple trade. Farmer to farmer. Nomad to nomad.
You have something I don’t and I have something you don’t.
Then starts the age of the great wagon ways.
You can’t get really far unless you have a horse and some wooden wheels.
Walking will take too long.
In the 1700s starts the invention of the train.
The steam locomotive.
Moving steel and iron.
Rails meant work for everyone.
Transportation not only brought trade but power and high wealth to those who owned it.
Industry and revolutionizing items.
The rails in the US were built for trade.
The midwest was the corn belt.
The south was cotton.
The east transported people and everything else.
Then comes diesel for the train and the invention of the motorized car.
The train as the main means of transportation has a relatively a short life.
It is still wildly used as a means of conveyance in most modern cities.
Some rails have been retired as the cost to electrify is high.
And so begins a new path back to walking.
Many cities are reinventing.
The High Line in NYC is just that.
A rail retired and renewed.
A space that used to move trains is now a long refurbished passageway of green lush plants and trees.
A meditative state of walking through pathways, mixed with art and high rise buildings.
That rail is now a trail.
Walking for recreation, no longer for trade.