Right to Roam: In Scotland, Hikers Can Go Anywhere - Backpacker

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I had come to the Highlands to exercise Scotland’s “right to roam,” which describes a 2003 law that allows citizens and visitors to responsibly enjoy Scottish lands and waters, no matter who owns them. For hikers and other outdoor recreationists, it’s a critical legal right in a country that’s 83 percent privately owned (by comparison, the United States is about 65 percent private).

I was particularly interested in Scotland because I’d recently written a book about how nature in the U.S. is becoming increasingly inaccessible. In This Land Is Our Land, I chronicle how anti-access landowners, conservative politicians, and far-right movements like the Sagebrush Rebellion—which made national news during the 2016 occupation of Oregon’s Malheur Wildlife Reserve—are seeking to deny the American birthright to enjoy the natural world.

I was eager to visit a country that’s moving in the opposite direction by providing unfettered access to its countryside. I wanted to see if Scotland’s right to roam worked, and how it worked, and whether it might work in the U.S. Instead of defining a park by its boundaries, is it possible—when it comes to hiking and biking and climbing—to simply declare there are no boundaries? Or would such universal access grate against that other American dogma, What’s mine is mine?

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Right to Roam: In Scotland, Hikers Can Go Anywhere - Backpacker