AITA, Small Town Intrigue Version

Settle in, boys and girls, for a tale of treachery, passive-aggressive Christianity, and stubborn resistance set amidst the rolling hills of the Virginia Piedmont. 

As I've detailed at length in this space, I live in close proximity to a small town that affords me the substantial luxury of being able to walk to bars, restaurants, and shops. My dog, in particular, enjoys our daily perambulations in search of various canine treats. On most days, our trip to the downtown area starts with a shortcut across the broad fields of St. John the Apostle Catholic Church.

Our house is the last in a row of homes on a quiet cul de sac (as the diagram below indicates). The church and its 20 acres is our neighbor to the west. Given our proximity to the church (which is also close to a large town park that's just out of frame to the northwest in the accompanying map), people have been cutting through our yard to make their way through a small copse of trees for easier access to the church and points west since we moved into the house in December 2004. So much so that a clear desire path has been claimed from the trees over the years, worn by the feet of shortcut-seekers.

We didn't give much thought to the path until we got a dog. There was a large play structure in the open space immediately west of our house that the church used for their preschoolers at recess, and when our kids were little we'd occasionally use the path to get to that. Once in a while we'd cut through the trees to get to the town Halloween or Christmas parades. But it was mostly an afterthought.

Once we got the dog, though, our use of the trail became an everyday thing. For a while, there was a sign at the northernmost point of the church property (along the road at the top of the image above) that prohibited dog-walking. In the interest of honesty, I ignored it. But once the church tore down the play structure, they removed the sign, so I assumed the two things were linked.

For more than four years now, we've walked the dog on the church property, almost always using the little trail to cross the woods, then bang south along the perimeter to get to a road that leads into town (as marked above). We would occasionally see the church's maintenance team mowing, edging, cutting down branches, etc, and I'd wave and usually get a wave in response. 

Last autumn, though, things took a weird turn.

As I headed out to take the dog on our daily, I reached the path to find that someone had piled a wagonload of leaves upon it. It was unquestionably intentional, given the location. "Well that's a dick move," I said to myself and proceeded to stomp over it and proceed on my way.

The feet of people and dogs slowly wore the leaves down until they were nothing more than a soft rug covering the path, until three months ago or so. I'd asked the church to remove a tree that had fallen and come to rest upon our neighborhood's fence. After a few weeks of radio silence, they eventually took care of it, clearing out a significant number of other trees in the process. Coincidentally (or, actually, not at all), a significant pile of brush from that effort wound up at the church-side entrance to the path, creating a second obstacle to human and canine foot traffic.

That ain't particularly Christian, is it?

My wife suggested I contact the church to complain, but that falls squarely in the category of issues you don't raise because you don't want to hear a particular answer. If they actively don't want people walking dogs or traversing their sprawling property (which, to be fair, is their right) despite years of custom, they can prohibit it more directly. 

And so JoJo and I continued to use the path, now stepping up over the brush as we did so. Until last week, when the church's bizarre Three Little Pigs game entered its next phase. 

We headed out one morning to find this:

That's the view headed from the path onto the church's meadow. JoJo is at right for size comparison. You're looking at a stick pile that's roughly two and a half feet high.

Here's a view from the other direction, headed back towards my house:

At this point, game on. I went back that evening and collected several armfuls of sticks to use as kindling for my fire pit, and resumed normal walking service. Since then, no new impediments have been added to the earthworks, though the church maintenance staff have been cutting down some pretty big trees of late, and it wouldn't surprise me to see them construct a brick wall that I won't be able to bypass. 

Meanwhile, JoJo blissfully skitters around the property, sniffing and chasing foxes and squirrels, ignorant of the ongoing cold war. There are other ways I can get downtown, but none of them allow her to roam free for so long, as God himself intended. See, for example, Genesis 1:25, "And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good." At least that's my interpretation of the Scripture.

So I lay it unto you, Gheorghies. Am I the asshole for trespassing upon the church's bountiful fields to allow my dog to run and play (and taking care not to disturb any property, to clean my dog's messes, to leash her when people are about, and to be respectful of the grounds)? Or is the church acting unneighborly by piling obstacles in the way of a path that's been used peacefully for decades?

I'll hang up and listen.