You’re running late to the bus stop. You check your clock every few strides — there’s still hope to make it. But after you turn a corner, you see that the sidewalk you’ve been sprinting takes a ridiculous curve instead of going straight to the street where you need to go. So what do you do? Cut the line through the grass.
You’ve just taken a ‘desire path,’ described by Robert Macfarlane as “paths & tracks made over time by the wishes & feet of walkers, especially those … that run contrary to design or planning”; he calls them “free-will ways.”
Robert Moor offers other terms, such as ‘cow paths,’ ‘pirate paths,’ ‘social trails,’ ‘kemonomichi (beast trails),’ ‘chemins de l’âne (donkey paths)’, and ‘Olifantenpad (elephant trails).’
JM Barrie described them as ‘Paths that have Made Themselves.’
Whichever word you decide to use, there’s a whole subreddit dedicated to these shortcuts, and it perfectly illustrates that urban developers aren’t always on top of their game. Or that people are just lazy. Or maybe it’s both!
#1 Next Level Desire Path
#2 Desire Path Created By A Squirrel We Feed Peanuts To Every Morning
#3 Desirepath Regocnition In The Netherlands
#4 Understandable Desire Path
#5 Never Heard Of This Before, But Figured I Had The Perfect One
#6 Been Here 30 Years, I Don’t Think The Gate Has Ever Been Used
#7 Well Worn Wal-Mart Path. Deepest I’ve Ever Seen
#8 We Won !
#9 They’re Both Kind Of Appealing
#10 Desire Steps?
#11 Miami U (Ohio) With The Awareness!!
#12 Update: Tree Is Budding + Secondary Path
#13 Desire Stairs
#14 Beautiful Exemplar
#15 “Please, Take This Circuitous Route Following The Perimeter” Signed, The Architects
#16 Ultimate Acceptance
#17 Three Years Ago, I Posted About A Desire Path On My Campus. We Are Successful!
#18 Frosty Scotland
#19 Desire Path To Avoid A Branch Hanging Over Another Larger Desire Path
#21 It’s Not Very Long But It’s Got Character
#22 My Daughter Found The Shortest Way Home
#23 This His Is In Fact A Walkway, Thanks Though Lil’ Sign
#24 Useful Desire Path
#25 Long, Foggy, More Direct Desire Path At Ucsc
#26 My University Gave Into Our Desire Path- In A Way That Created Another, Smaller Desire Path
#27 A Low-Tech Approach To Defeating A Desire Path
#28 One Side Preferred
#29 Absolute Behemoth Desired Path Next To The College In My Home Town
#30 Desirepath? Gimme That Desirestreet!
