The twists and turns of ‘desire paths’

Pause in a park or field in summer and look out across the grass and you’ll see a multitude of thin, earthy tracks breaking up the swaths of green like shatters in a pane of glass. These are most commonly known as desire paths – although other names include cow paths, desire lines, pirate paths or social trails – and are created when humans (or animals) are drawn in the same direction over and over, flattening the grass and eventually wearing it away.

The term ‘desire path’ was coined by French scientist, philosopher and poet Gaston Bachelard in his 1958 book La Poétique de l’Éspace (or ‘The Poetics of Space’). He described them as paths ‘created by usage’ which pedestrians have taken to get ‘from point A to point B more quickly than the predetermined paths (like sidewalks) that have been put in place’.