Greater Roadrunner

The straight path and the highway

Original photograph by Karen Hall, design by Wietske Merison

Last weekend, I had the honor of visiting my Amish neighbors in Holmes County, Ohio. As I traveled north from Columbus to my destination between the towns of Berlin and Walnut Creek, the busy interstate turned into a smaller highway, which turned into a scenic byway, which turned into an old country road where my car was but a guest amidst horses, buggies, and bicycles.

The 377 thousand Old Order Amish people living in the United States have communally decided not to own cars. Their reasons for doing so are not necessarily religious in the sense that they believe cars are inherently sinful or modern technology is inherently bad. Their relationship with technology is simply different from that of the majority of the people and communities in the United States today.

For the Amish, the main concern when deciding whether or not to engage with new technologies is their impact on the social fabric of their community. In the case of cars, car ownership greatly broadens one’s scope of living. Anyone who lives more broadly is bound to be more thinly spread. The more time we spend in our cars or at remote locations, the less time we are present in our communities and with our families. Horses and buggies, as opposed to cars, encourage the Amish to live on a smaller scale, being fully present and engaged in their local communities and families first instead of living a modern-day nomadic lifestyle. People work at their farms or in nearby shops and institutions, as their walkable towns flourish and are full of life. Families travel together, neighbors are greeted, visited, and known, and churches are deeply connected communities. As such, the social fabric of the community is preserved and protected against many of the challenges facing slowly disintegrating communities all over America today.

In many ways, Dutch bike-centered life is not so very different from this aspect of Amish life. As I saw Amish children, women, and men use bicycles not just for leisure but for transportation of persons and goods, I felt right at home. When I first moved to Los Angeles, I bought a bike, thinking I would use it, in addition to the public transit system, to buy my groceries, go to my university, and get around like I had my whole life. But if there’s anything both the Amish and Dutch infrastructures show, it is that such decisions need to be made and supported communally in order to be sustained individually. I feared for my life riding my bike on the four-lane roads of LA, and everything was simply too far away because the city was designed to fit the scope of cars, not bikes, buggies, or pedestrians. In LA, I constantly fought against social isolation, and in many ways, I lost the battle before I even started.

The communal solidarity, modesty, and patience shown by my Amish neighbors filled me with a deep sense of respect. In a world of fast fashion and crushing beauty standards, they choose plain clothes. In a world of highways and cars, they choose country roads and buggies. In a world of industrialization, they choose small-scale traditional farming and small local businesses. In a world of secularization, they choose faithfulness. In a world of globalized standardization, they choose nonconformity. They show that ‘the West’ is not, and does not have to be, a monolith, and that amidst our modern challenges, a different life is possible as long as our desire for it is deeply rooted in higher values and supported by an entire community.

As Muslims, we are guided to walk ‘a straight path’. Every time we recite Surah Al-Fatiha, ‘The Opening’, the first chapter of the Qur’an, we ask our Creator to “guide us along the straight path (al-sirat al-mustaqim)” (Qur’an 1:6). But what do we think that straight path actually is? Is it a concrete highway of convenience? Is it a highway of indulgence without limits, where we blindly drive on auto-pilot, navigated like a leaf in the whimsical winds of technological innovations without questioning their direction or destination? Or could it be that the path is described as straight because, regardless of the twists and turns our paths in this worldly life may take, our character, morality, and values ought to be as straight as our spines? If so, the straight path of morality, sincerity, and genuine faithfulness might guide us to leave the highway of capitalist industrialism, individualism, and wastefulness - or, as the Qur’an describes them, greed, selfishness, and ingratitude - and find our way back to the local straight paths we know. If so, it may be wise not to ridicule nonconforming communities like the Amish but rather humbly learn from their uprightness in crooked times.

In a world where it is the norm for birds to fly, Roadrunners choose, instead, to walk. As a result of this environmental adaptation, Roadrunners run like no other. With their feet firmly grounded in the desert soil, the little birds can run at a speed of up to 32 km/h (20 m/h). Only out of dire necessity will they take flight, such as when they are threatened by a predator. As they run by, their feet leave a little trail of X’s behind, like little kisses on the land they refuse to raise their wings against in flight. It is not easy to be a walker in the kingdom of birds, but when the winds of corruption fly over, Roadrunners remain grounded on their straight path.