The People's Path

One of the many purposes of this blog is to help keep you up to date on the major and trivial goings on in our town, particularly for those of you who only spend a part of the year in Petoskey but still feel a spiritual connection to our special corner of the earth. I'm not sure where this event ranks on on the trivial-to-major scale but it meant something to me so I pass it along for whatever it is worth to you.

This week they have been repaving the pathways through Pennsylvania Park in the middle of Downtown Petoskey. Today I walked by on my way to lunch and saw that, at long last, they are paving the long, diagonal path that cuts across the park from northwest to southeast.

If you don't spend much time walking in Downtown Petoskey, you may not instantly appreciate the significance of this. That diagonal is, without a doubt, the most common route people take across the park. It goes roughly from American Spoon Foods across the park to Meyer Ace Hardware (an then on to the Northern Michigan Artists Market). Until today it has been one of those natural routes that, despite all the plans of the experts, never gets officially established but is the creation of the people literally voting with their feet.

Over the years the grass along this path has been beaten down by thousands of feet in all sizes that refuse to follow the establishment guidelines and instead strike out on their own spontaneous, leaderless people's revolution. It is a meek, humble path, in some places little more than a size double-e flip-flop in width and often deep with mud. Grass seed has not conquered this path. Mud puddles have not kept the people away.

I must say, I have some mixed feelings watching all this spirit paved over. But in the end I will not miss the mud. Thank you to the powers-that-be for giving in to the will of the masses by officially sanctioning, and paving, the people's path!