Robert Macfarlane: "Paths are human, they are traces of our relationships."
Nature author Robert Macfarlane has written recently about the inherent poetry of desire paths. In his 2012 book The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot, Macfarlane calls them “elective easements” and says, “Paths are human; they are traces of our relationships.”
"Desire paths have been created by enthusiastic dogs in back gardens, by superstitious humans avoiding scaffolding and by students seeking shortcuts to class. Yet while illicit trails may have marked the easier (i.e. shorter) route for centuries, the pandemic has turned them into physical markers of our distance. Desire paths are no longer about making life easier for ourselves, but about preserving life for everyone."
