Information transmission is anonymous, and like everything else, takes place in enclosures of automobiles and post office boxes. The things that seem to keep us connected actually keeps us apart, like the post-World War II Interstate highway system, modeled on the German Autobahn made up of mazes of roads that fence in cities and housing developments as often as it links them together. Some of Stilgoe's notes are not so much observations about cultural life than trivia about farming and watching picket fences whiz by, and his more minute details often seem more from books than observations, although they are inspired by his wanderings. Other times, his suggestions are strange and unexpected, like the pleasures of walking a highway, and finding the "light of genuine surprise, finding anything from vibrant immigrant...

Surprise and delight comes not just with the pastoral encounters one might have with the natural world, but with any interesting places that are unexpected and lie off the beaten path of one's conventional, planned existence and the routes one is forced to take by urban planners. Ultimately, Stilgoe's book, even though it can romanticize the past as 'pure' is a powerful reminder of the need to experience the out-of-doors in an immediate fashion, and it is inspiring to think that exploration does not need to take place in the utter wilderness, but can even take place in mundane locations.
Works Cited

Stilgoe, John. Outside Lies Magic. Walker & Co, 1999.