Every day, hundreds of us cross the lawn and enter Wilder Hall, leaving nothing but dirt in our path. What could have been — or maybe should have been — green grass has been stomped out by our footsteps and turned into a student-made walkway, regardless of the concrete path directly next to it. It’s not just near the back of Wilder Hall that you see these paths; you can often find small trails carved into the ground in Tappan or the front of dorms. It’s barely noticeable until you know what to look for — and then you see it everywhere. The names of these paths, which many don’t know, are desire paths, and are more than just well-worn lines etched in dirt.

Desire paths, which can also be referred to as desire lines, are defined as unplanned small trails that are formed by erosion caused by human or animal traffic. It often represents the shortest or easiest path to navigate between one’s origin and destination, and its level of erosion reflects the traffic level it receives. When looking for others who have researched these fascinating topics, I stumbled upon the poets and writers Paul Farley and Michel Symmons Roberts, who reflected that “nobody decides to make a desire path. There is no ribbon-cutting. These paths develop over time, imperceptibly, gathering definition as people slowly recognize and legitimize the footfall of their peers.”

I asked Chair and Professor of Psychology and Professor of Environmental Studies Cindy Frantz to share her thoughts on the psychology of desire paths.

“I think the decision to start a path is completely different from the decision to walk on one that’s already been established,” Frantz said in our interview. “Once a path is there, you don’t really feel like you’re doing any harm, and that’s where the power of social norms comes in. If we see a path, it signals that lots of others have walked there before, and that makes it feel okay to us. So the really interesting question is: who starts those paths? It’d probably be much easier to keep people from using them if they were still faint or barely visible. But once they’re fully established, there’s this sense of, ‘Well, everybody does it, right?’ Even someone who might care about the worms or the grass, if they feel like everyone else is doing it, that gives them a kind of moral license to follow along.”

With this in mind, it was easy to determine that desire paths revolve around routine and social norms. It is not hard to imagine students, in their busy lives and ever-changing moods, feeling comfortable in following in the footsteps of others, choosing not only to take the faster path but ones that are certified by their peers. However, when I first started to dive into the history and meaning of desire paths, what came to mind was not necessarily the psychological answer. True to being an Obie, I wanted to find the deeper meaning — even if it wasn’t there — of desire paths and if there is value in the exercise of freedom in choosing the unmarked grounds. Desire paths can also speak of possibility, of not only being the first but going against the grain and letting our hearts decide which way is best for us. They connect us to where we want to be, without having to work under the confines of society, which takes shape in sidewalks in this analogy.

These queries ultimately also led me to Søren Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism. His philosophical work emphasizes choosing your own path, even if it’s difficult or isolating, and more importantly, rejecting society’s norms. Regarding desire paths, this includes rejecting the prelaid roads and making your own routes. “The crowd is untruth,” he says in his essay of the same name, which centers on rejecting the crowd as the way of pursuing meaning and finding individual truth. But does this truly fit desire paths? Professor Frantz shared her doubts.

“I don’t really buy that as an explanation for desire paths,” Frantz said. “It’s true that we have a strong need for free will — we want to feel like we’re freely making choices. And maybe that’s why the first few people create those paths, but I don’t find it very compelling overall. I think we’re much more likely to want to exert our free will in situations that really matter to us. Like choosing a major, deciding where to go to college, or who to be in a relationship with. Those are big decisions. But where you walk on campus? I don’t know. … I just don’t think there’s much to it.”

Whether the psychological or philosophical answer speaks to you, desire paths introduce a new way to look at the ways of our environment. I often wonder why Facilities Operations has not constructed sidewalks for the desire paths that exist. It would ultimately lead to students getting to places faster, and students have already taken the agency to start the process of flattening the ground. But something struck me when interviewing Professor Frantz; she mentioned that there was a possibility that students who were more environmentally conscious would be less likely to walk across the desire path, as it goes against protecting and preserving the environment. With the environment in mind, it seems sidewalks and desire paths have their faults.

“I’ve also explored the psychological relationship humans have with nature, as that’s another part of my research,” Frantz said. “One thing I might predict is that people who feel a stronger connection to nature may be less likely to walk on desire paths because they’re more concerned about the impact. Personally, when I see an area where something used to grow but has been trampled, it actually hurts. I feel bad for the plants. So, I can imagine that this sense of connection to the natural world could really influence how people behave in those situations.”

This brought a whole new layer of questioning for me. I have never been as environmentally conscious as those eagerly participating in the Ecolympics. Still, I understand wanting to preserve greenery and everything that grows worldwide. While that’s never stopped me from walking the path to De- Café, I wonder what students who spend their lives protecting the environment think about the desire paths their classmates have created. Martina Novajas, a College fourth-year Environmental Studies and Psychology major and an Office of Energy and Sustainability intern, shared her thoughts.

“To some extent, I feel that [desire paths] do tell us about people’s preferences about space and highlight preferred routes that can inform urban planning decisions,” Novajas wrote in an email to the Review. “A sort of similar example is the crosswalk that goes right across the Science Center; it wasn’t there before, but it became a need because students were crossing there naturally all the time. However, it is true that these paths that cut through the grass have environmental impacts, such as soil compaction, which makes it harder for vegetation to grow in these areas. A great example of this is the patch behind Wilder Hall, which has basically no grass because of the high foot traffic in the area. Overall, I don’t see this becoming a larger environmental problem, at least on our campus, because we are not disturbing sensitive habitats and the areas affected tend to be small. However, it is definitely something to be aware of and pay attention to, and it could potentially inform the design of more user- friendly or effective pathways.”

So, what can we learn from desire paths? Are they metaphors for resistance, or the opposite, reflecting the need to follow our peers and our comforts? Should we do better at protecting the nature we have in life, or do desire paths signal a need for institutions to adapt to people’s actual needs? Maybe this all signals that, as a fourth-year, I have too much time. Regardless, I hope you learned a little about the small things that make up our daily lives on campus, and that when walking in the grass to your next destination, you might just be making a path for those in the future.