On Trails, Trespassing, and What Neighbors Owe to Each Other

Here is an essay in Outside magazine on the ethics of neighborliness and trespassing.  It explicitly takes up that always relevant question: What do we owe to each other?

The author is a trail runner who – we gather – has relatively recently moved onto a five acre property with ample wilderness area around it.  The trouble is his land comes up against his neighbors’, and so do his values.  The author tells the story of accidentally trespassing on one neighbor’s property while running.  Here is his account of the ensuring exchange:

“You can’t be up here. It’s private property,” he said.

I hesitated. “I thought you had a flat tire,” I told him. “It looked like you needed help.” But as I looked at him and his bike more closely, I could tell that his only problem was me. 

“Hi, I’m Jon,” I said. “I’m your neighbor. My house is down there in the valley.”

He didn’t introduce himself back. I hoped not to cause trouble, but I pressed him anyway.

“Would it be OK for me to occasionally run your trail?”

“Doesn’t matter who you are. This is private property.”

“I understand. But I could give you something in return.” I attempted a more utilitarian approach, accepting that my moral appeal had failed. He clearly was not interested in treating his neighbor as he would like to be treated. “I have children. We could put them to work here on trail maintenance.” 

He didn’t laugh. So I offered my services as a doctor in case he got hurt up here on his bike. 

“Private property,” he repeated.

I could even be there, I told him, if only to regard the sound of a falling tree when nobody else was around, a rather existential approach. Now I was pushing him, resorting to sarcasm. He said he would sue me if I used his trail again. 

 

What’s going on here?  The author has one explanation:

Privilege and power ultimately determine what is a right. But it is possible to take that responsibility upon ourselves, in our daily lives, in how we act and speak to each other. 

Most of my neighbors do this. They are good to each other. They don’t threaten lawsuits as they hide their fears behind property lines. They are willing to solve problems through conversation and cooperation, not threats and litigation. They stop to say hello. We talk about small things, make eye contact, and slowly develop relationships. We can count on each other for things we need. We make a community by developing trust and meaning among ourselves.

On the author’s view, the bottom of the issue seems to be that some neighbors don’t get that society should be about cooperation, and so fail according to the norms of neighborliness by enforcing their property rights.  Call this the communitarian objection to property rules.

I have another explanation.  Trespassing on someone’s land is one way of insulting them.  I know a little about this, I confess, because I too am a veteran trespasser.  My particular combination of hobbies, vacation destinations, and singular navigational ineptitude has landed me inadvertently on private land some number of times.  Most of the ensuing exchanges begin like the author’s – with a fair bit of wariness.  That’s because it’s natural to be wary of someone who is violating your entitlements, even without malice or knowledge.  Compare: I spit in your face and – baffled – you ask me what I’m doing.  It would be unwise prudentially and morally for me to needle you.  “We’re neighbors!” I might say, but should not.  I also should not ask you for something like a justificatory explanation of your offense.  That misunderstands the dialectical situation.  If I have violated a norm and you have been slighted by my trespass, I should offer an apology, not a demand. 

The first explanation accuses the neighbor in the story of not getting that neighbors should cooperate.  I think that gets things rather seriously mixed up.  Observing the property boundaries is not flouting cooperation.  It is the cooperation.  Of course it’s a fairly minimal norm of cooperation, but the way we get to more intimate norms is by showing fidelity to the minimal ones.  It’s tempting to think we can substitute respect for others’ physical or moral space with offering benefits they didn’t ask for and probably don’t want.  But that’s not enough.  It doesn’t matter how well your children will maintain the trail.  Cooperation involves respect for each person, and that means making offers the other actually accepts in real life before we help ourselves in return.

Of course, you might have some serious worries about the regime of property as it presently exists.  There are lots of people against whom property is enforced, but who aren’t seeing much benefit in return.  That’s completely fair.  But that is a different objection – and not one comfortably pressed by anyone who can afford five acres of land on a forest boundary.  The egalitarian objection to property deserves our attention.  The communitarian objection does not. 

For my own part, my experience with property owners is that a little penitence goes a long way, and many a landowner has been glad to help me on my way once things got straightened out.  I don’t really think it’s trespassing in the physical landscape that gets people upset.  Trespassing in the moral landscape is another matter.