No Trespassing, Betreten Verboten

The summer hiking season is over, the Indian Summer mushroom hunting period has ended, so this may be a good time to talk about criss-crossing other people's land.

Before that, however, a tidbit about the name of the period we call Indian Summer. In German, it is called "Altweibersommer", which could be translated literally as "old women's summer".

And this translation would be dead wrong. It is not about some really old ladies relaxing in fall sunshine. The "weiber" is misconstrued as being the "Weiber" (old for women) while it really comes from "weben" (weaving). Spider webs glistening from dew in the morning sun were turned by the old Germans into a tale of the godesses of destiny combing their hair, losing some "strands of life" in the process.

But, with English being fashionable, travel writers extolling the Indian Summer on the East Coast, and with some Germans not able to shake the "old women" misunderstanding, you will frequently find "Indian Summer" being used to describe autumn landscapes in Bavaria.

Back to trespassing. 

When you notice the absence of something small, it seems to creep up on you and then kind of "hit you".

For us, this ocurred with the "no trespassing" signs. We wandered through fields and forest, and there were no "Betreten Verboten" signs. After weeks, possibly months, it sunk in.

Why did we have 'no trespassing' signs everywhere back in the States, but none here, despite the Germans (and others) preoccupation with the famous, high profile  "betreten verboten" in some city parks?

The mishap of the Woodstock style mud slide described in an earlier post proved a catalyst of sorts in our musing about the missing "no trespassing" signs.

Health insurance and tort law!

In a country where almost everyone has health insurance and where tort law takes into account your voluntary wandering through the forest as a factor of personal resonsibility, the legal stakes of 'no trespassing' signs are very low.

You fall on someone's property and get hurt, you go to the hospital and get treated. No one can bankrupt you for not posting 'no trespassing' at your quarter acre of woodland, the victim has no great incentive to sue you, the insurance company has not much to gain by using the absence of the sign as grounds to refuse a payout.

Hence, health insurance for almost everyone reduces "sign pollution".
Remember the southwest deserts of the U.S. with all those 'no trespassing' signs but not a living soul for fifty miles around?

Of course, you can be sued under certain conditions, but that is not the point. The point is that the combination of insurance and reasonable tort provisions will drastically reduce friction and benefit the community as a whole, or so we claim after many hours out in the woods.