Although we’ve walked many, and have made a few ourselves, we only recently heard the expression “desire paths” to describe unplanned trails created by human desire.

Robert Macfarlane, author of The Lost Words, calls them “free-will ways”…

paths & tracks made over time by the wishes & feet of walkers, especially those paths that run contrary to design or planning

JM Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, described the desire paths in Kensington Gardens as

Paths that have Made Themselves.

Names for desire paths evoke a kind of poetry:

desire lines

silent trails

wild lines

ghost paths

wish paths

wanderer’s way

invisible roads

earth’s memory

Some people think desire paths are simply short cuts or more efficient routes. We’ve come to think there are often more ineffable reasons.

As we were walking through Central Park, we came upon a curious path that made us think that they are not always sparked by the shortest route, but perhaps, the more pleasurable one. It veered only a few feet from the old wide dirt bridal path people like to walk. This new path didn’t short-cut up to the reservoir as we first thought. When we walked it ourselves we realized that it took us into more intimate contact with trees, light, shadow for a pleasurable few steps that gave an inkling of “forest”.

To us, desire paths speak of yearning, to live freely in an unprescribed way, to connect with some perhaps-indescribable but eminently felt quality, of light or tree presence, perhaps, or the feeling of a particular texture of earth underfoot. It is as though wanderers listen to the place with some other part of themselves…and follow…

It brings to mind Annie Albers’ perfect insight into being creative which of course is the process of living, the way we all forge our desire paths:

…by listening….

Related Posts

The Lost Words’ Evoke Our Wild Landscape

improvising as “listening”

Useful Ideas about Paths We Find Ourselves On (Richard Long, Buson, Trungpa Rimpoche)