Of Empires And Idiots: Reflections From Hadrian’s Wall
Hadrian’s Wall is better part of 2,000 years old and amazing.
So, I’m sitting at the base of Hadrian’s Wall in Northern England with my laptop typing. I’ve been silently denigrating everyone I have seen perched above these magnificent vistas with their heads buried in their phones, yet here I am behind my computer. To the idle observer, I must seem infinitely worse. I justify my bigotry by saying I am technically at work. At least, that’s what I plan to tell the IRS.
I’m one ridge past Sycamore Gap. This particularly photogenic spot was made famous in the curious 1991 film “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.” While Alan Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham ruled the movie, I do have to wonder what possessed the filmmakers to cast Kevin Costner, an obvious American, in the lead. His distinctively Midwestern colonial drawl did seem painfully out of place, but I digress. The point is Sycamore Gap. Sycamore Gap is an alluvial draw between two ridges that sports a towering sycamore tree in its basin.
The view north from Hadrian’s Wall in Britain is simply amazing.
A Truly Remarkable Place
Sycamore Gap is a prominent cut in Hadrian’s Wall — an iconic 73-mile stone structure that stretches from the West Coast to the East Coast all the way across Britain. Begun in 122 AD for the Roman Emperor Hadrian, this enormous defensive edifice separated civilization from the barbarians.
Strolling about the remains of the forts at Vindolanda and Housesteads is to be transported back to a most remarkable era. There is a synergistic combination of breathtaking natural beauty and deep, palpable history. However, to get to the Wall, one has to walk.
The Therapeutic Catharsis of Walking
We Americans don’t do a great deal of walking anymore. By contrast, the Brits live for it. The place is littered with public walking trails. People walk absolutely everywhere. Part of that stems from there being no decent parking in the entire country. However, most of it is simply that Britons, particularly the rural sort, really do appreciate their country.
As I sit typing these words, it is the day of the Queen’s funeral. That makes this Monday a national bank holiday. As such, everyone in Britain seems to be off work and out walking. They are, to an individual, quite somber — they did indeed love that remarkable woman. However, these people all seem to be treating their pervasive national melancholia with exercise.
And that, believe it or not, is the point. Hadrian’s Wall is a legitimately extraordinary thing. However, to get to it, you have to claw your way up craggy steps cut into ancient hillsides or often foot it a mile or more from the nearest car park. We Yanks would never tolerate such.
I fear that if Hadrian’s Wall were in the United States, we would have terraformed the place to allow convenient parking and universal handicapped access. Those spaces that yet remained difficult to access we likely would have equipped with electrical people movers, cable car trollies, banks of porta-johns, and some kind of adorable funicular railway. That way, we could pay some money and then go straight from our lumbering SUVs to the attraction in question with minimal fuss and bother. Along the way, we would also get fat, develop diabetes, and die early of heart disease.
These adorable little walking trails are everywhere in the UK
America the Beautiful
You’ll not find a more vociferous proponent of truth, justice, and the American way than me. I wholeheartedly embrace American exceptionalism and unabashedly champion the Pax Americana. We Yanks have slathered freedom and liberty across the planet on a scale previously unimagined. However, we really do suck at walking.
America is indeed the fattest nation on the planet. If you doubt that assertion, just ask any American doctor anywhere. Even our poor people are obese and carry smartphones.
Many of us fail to appreciate it, but America really is a great place to live. That’s why the rest of the world seems so hellbent to come here. We tend to take our magnificent homeland for granted.
Britain has a striking dearth of litter. This is a most public place, a Northumberland National Park Public Footpath, and there are no discarded Coke cans, water bottles or even cigarette butts. The British are justifiably proud of their nation and treat it accordingly. On this national day of mourning, they all seem united behind the memory of Queen Elizabeth II. I find myself looking upon such national unity wistfully.
Ruminations
We Americans have plenty about which to feel proud. Ours is, for the time being at least, the most powerful economy on the planet. Our capacity for creative thought is unparalleled. We have done things that other nations might only have dreamt of. However, we always seem to be minimizing or ignoring the good stuff in favor of the warts.
So, if I were the King of America (not a real thing), I would encourage people to walk more … and gripe less. We should tidy up our magnificent nation both physically and metaphorically, cleansing ourselves of the sort of spiritual and corporeal litter that poisons our lands and our souls. At the end of the day, we would be healthier, happier, and better positioned to be a continued force for good around the globe. God bless America.
This is Sycamore Gap before some flaming losers came out in the
dead of night with a chainsaw and cut the bloody tree down.
Some people really do suck, like a lot.
Addendum
I penned this essay several years ago and then misplaced it on my laptop. Much has changed about the world since then. Some of that orbits around Sycamore Gap.
The iconic sycamore tree that gave the gap its name was estimated to be around 150 years old. It was in the top five neatest natural things I have ever seen. And then, on 28 September 2023, some freaking idiots went out there with a chainsaw under cover of darkness and cut it down, just for meanness.
Four men were arrested, two of whom will go to trial later this month. I have yet to read anything of a motive beyond simple rank, vapid cruelty. The crime of maliciously felling this iconic tree offends me more than many murders. If found guilty, I’d be okay with hanging those people. Anyone whose spirit is so blighted as to feel inclined to destroy such a magnificent thing just for giggles kind of forfeits the right to share my world. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.
