Love Bites: Desire Paths

If you're a marginalised writer or journalist of some description, attending a book launch feels a bit like attending a wedding. Every conversation you have seems to come to one question: "And where's your book?" 

Milestones – books, spouses, babies, degrees – structure the course of our lives, both in retrospect and in imagination. A bit like a wedding, a book launch marks a discrete point in time that stands in for a continuous process. It's a corner on a life path, a fixed place where one must follow or go off-road. 

One of my favourite turns of phrase is the 'desire path', referring to an urban planning phenomenon in which a path is formed – often over grass or unpaved terrain – indicating an alternative route chosen by enough people that it becomes worn down, marked by thousands of feet taking it over the one imposed by the pavement. 

A desire path is a living record of collective decision making in which strangers agree to diverge from the path one at a time. It's a collaborative act of rejection built off of individual decisions to go a different way. The study and preservation of desire paths (or 'erosional paths', as they're sometimes called) counteracts the erasure wrought by colonisation and settlement. As the land is paved over with concrete and high rises, the body resists by deferring to intuition. As more feet erode the path, it becomes easier for others to take.

I'm fundamentally resistant to rhetoric that urges us to "forge your own trail," or "paddle your own canoe." Maybe I have a book in the pipeline. Maybe I don't. But, regardless, to share a desire path is a beautiful thing. We don't have to be walking it at the same time for it to remember our feet.