Desire lines

I like to walk. My body moves in one direction along the sidewalk and my mind wanders down whatever paths of contemplation I need or want at the time. 

Most of my walking happens in an urban context, which means it happens in neighbourhoods that have been planned by professionals called urban planners. They design and then someone builds sidewalks and pathways that, for some reason or other, the professionals deem to be the right way to get from A to B. 

However, humans walk those paths (as do four-legged creatures, likely, but this is not about them) and, therefore, we don’t always follow the prescribed plan or path. Sometimes we deviate and we create a better — the best — way to get from A to B. 

Those lines, those paths, have a name, an actual term that describes them quite perfectly: They are called desire lines. I first learned of them from an article in the Autumn 2020 issue of the University of Alberta’s New Trail magazine, and I have since taken them for an outing in my imagination. 

I love the name, and I love what the name says and the lines represent: Humans deciding for themselves there is a better/faster/more desirous way to get from A to B. Once one person starts down that new way, others quite naturally follow, and it becomes a path of its own. Look at the photo above: The built paths may be used, but the desire line that cuts across the grass is obviously used — and has been used enough to become a bona fide path. 

And that is what I particularly like about desire lines: While one person can create one with repeated and consistent effort, desire lines are more effectively (and more usually) created by a collective. I love that — person after person, stranger one to the other, follows in the footsteps of those who walked before them. They walked that path out of desire to make their own way from A to B. 

As physical manifestation and also as inspiring metaphor, desire lines show us we can get from A to B our own way, no matter what the professionals had planned for us.

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A Post a Day in May No. 12 For the past two years, I have posted something to this blog every single day in May. This year, I hope to do it again. 

Photo credit: "Desire Line for Campbell Road" by Alan Stanton is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0