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!
01. Next Level Desire Path

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02. Desire Path Created By A Squirrel We Feed Peanuts To Every Morning

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03. Desire Path Recognition In The Netherlands

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04. Never Heard Of This Before, But Figured I Had The Perfect One

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05. Understandable Desire Path

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