Desire Paths

The pavement is concrete, it runs parallel with the tarmac road, we people walk it without thought..for it is there, they have in most cases in our localities been there for our whole lives, they were dreamed up by someone, or some people, a a long time ago for convenience...the best way to string various locations together.The village grew, some turned into towns, some into super city. We each know our own network of pavements in our localities...we walk them without thought, it is virtually automatic. Now, take a turn off this grid, maybe to the river, to the fields, the woods, away to somewhere that has not paths made from concrete. we find paths still...rougher ones, but paths nontheless...a field has one across it, or alonside it..now add the weather to the picture..imagine it rains for 2 whole months, the current rough path becomes a sludgy no go zone, the dog walkers curse at their daily mucky walk, and if it is bad enough a new way through or along may develop, maybe it skirts around the muddy obstacle, but the grass gets trampled down, other walkers see that this has occured and follow suit...it may over time become a new path, a desire path, not created by a council office and diggers, but by human whims, a desire path..how many of our paths are desire pathways? I know places in my locality where council laid paths are ignored, and the locals use the way though the wwods and fields, because it is quicker, and for some people pleasanter...a desire path. i have to be careful with my desire paths when i am approaching and leaving my secret nature place...as i don't want it to be discovered, so i have three different ways...one easier (which i had used too often and now am forced to leave grow back again, and two more difficult, which involve ducking and diving under hawthorn boughs, and up sometimes slippy wooded slopes...i tread carefully, so as to disturb the undergrowth as little as possible...maybe i should use stilts:)