DESIRE CAUGHT BY THE TRAIL

You know me and I know you.  And we all like trails and we all like desire. Which is why we like desire trails. OK, sometimes they’re called desire lines, but that’s far less sexy, and let’s face it, these things are trails not lines.  And sometimes they get called desire paths.

There was an article in the Guardian last year titled ‘Desire paths: the illicit trails that defy the urban planners.'  To which one can only say “Illicit? Oh, please.”

The article contained a link to an academic paper from the University of Wollongong (you may make up your own joke here) which contained this fabulous bit of prose: ‘The theme of grounded practice returns in a very different way in Nathalie Casemajor Loustau and Heather Davis’ discussion of their project – “Ouvert/Open: Common Utopias”. Expanding out from a particular and local phenomenon of urban life in Montreal where desire lines record collective disobedience.'  To which one might say, ‘Oh, double please.’  

Anyway, above and below are some desire trails/paths/lines I walked recently.  Me, I’m just SO illicit and disobedient.  And OK, I'm not sure that the one below really counts, but it's a top quality trail in any case:

WINGS OF DESIRE

When does a desire line become a walking path?

In order to avoid quoting wikipedia I’m going to quote yourdictionary.com  – they say that a desire line is “A path that pedestrians take informally rather than taking a sidewalk or set route; e.g. a well-worn ribbon of dirt that one sees cutting across a patch of grass, or paths in the snow.”

A perfectly good definition I’d say, and above is a very nice one in Vienna; and yes, if you look really closely you can see Harry Lime’s Ferris wheel in the middle distance.  I do wonder if there was always a gap in that hedge or whether pedestrian desire created it.

And above is another nice one seen on my travels, not as well-worn as many – it’s outside the library in Ely, Nevada, birthplace of Patricia Nixon (Ely – not the library).

The one above is clearly a walking path, actually part of the Essex Way, an 82 mile walking route from Epping to Harwich. Obviously there’s no sidewalk (pavement) and other routes across that patch of land would be possible but none so direct, and if you're walking 82 miles you don't want to do too much meandering.  You might think a desire line is the shortest route, and perhaps also the path of least resistance, though in this case that applies to the walking path.

So imagine how intrigued I was by the path above, seen just outside the boundary of Griffith Park.  It was leading off from a street I know pretty well but I’d never noticed it before. I thought it might be some indirect way into the park and it seemed pretty inviting so I started walking on it.

It was, you’d have to say, a disappointment.  It runs for maybe 30 feet then takes a sharp left and then you see a gate:

It’s the entrance to somebody’s back yard, and the owner understandably wants to keep out wandering riff raff.  If the path had been perfectly straight and I’d been able to see the gate from the street I wouldn’t have even set foot on the path. I wouldn’t have had any desire. 

Some contradictions to be worked out there.

WALKING WITH DESIRE

I can’t remember exactly when I first came across the term “desire lines” – it was a while back certainly, but I do recall that it was both exciting and disappointing.  It was exciting because here was a term describing something I’d noticed but didn’t know there was a name for.  But it was disappointing because I’d somehow thought I was the only one who’d spotted this phenomenon.  It was a downer to realize that my powers of observation weren’t as unique as I’d thought they were.

A desire line, as you may well know, is a walking path created over time by pedestrians, in preference to more formal routes along a sidewalk or paved track.  It generally involves a shortcut, and repeated walking of the line generally leads to a line of bare grass or mud.  Here’s an especially fine example in Atlantic City

And below there’s an image from the website for vanseo design who say  “Don’t fight desire lines. Learn to embrace them.”  I do.  I definitely do.

Once you’re aware of them, you see them everywhere.  Up at the Cal Arts campus where I’m doing a bit of teaching these days there’s a lot of grass, a lot of pedestrian routes, a helluva lot of parking, and in fact precious few desire lines.  You could argue that this is a mark of good design and that the formal paths are laid out very skillfully and already cater for all of people’s walking desires.  But I knew there had to be some somewhere.  In due course I was able to find one, or depending on how you look at it two of them, but it wasn’t until a couple of weeks back when I was taking my Wednesday afternoon pre-class constitutional.

One of the college dorms is set down a slope from the main walking and driving route that runs through the campus.  There are stairs nearby, the steps painted with yellow edges for health and safety reasons, and in fact it’s probably easier to use the steps than to climb up the slope.  Nevertheless, I saw what appeared to be a desire line running up the slope (above and below).

On closer inspection however I saw, and you can see, that it wasn’t a true desire line at all, but a paved path.  My guess is that this had started out as a genuine desire line, a track of bare earth in the grass, and the powers that be had helpfully paved it, with biggish cobbles for extra traction, making the ascent that much easier.  Fair enough, you might say.

But this hadn’t been enough for the Cal Arts pedestrians.  About fifty feet away there was another desire line still extant, shorter, less steep and as yet unpaved. A REAL desire line.  For all kinds of reasons this made me very happy indeed.