It is clear that today as development transforms most rural areas in America, Europe and many parts of Asia, new people take up residence upon rural land who are not rural people and who do not participate in rural life either in terms of living from the land or in terms of participation in the extended rural community. Rural life includes of an array of elements that are both common and shared and which, taken together, create an extended and integrated life fabric for a rural community. Not all rural life is agricultural, however, although agriculture usually dominates rural economies. Many elements are present in rural life in addition to the characteristically agricultural or farming elements. In fact, healthy rural life includes a diversity of occupations focused in nodes or places scattered across the rural landscape.
Paths are the connections between places in the rural area.
Originally the route from one farm or cabin to the next was literally a path, a footpath. In time, paths were expanded and extended and became trails and roads. Paths make possible not only movement from place to place but are the fundamental threads connecting the social fabric of the rural community. Paths are the worn ways that take people to the store, back past the church, and up the ridge to Uncle Dorsey's place. Paths are like the neural system of a rural community.