Elephant paths

Paved paths, roads and streets, and often unpaved ones as well, lead us where we want to go, from A to B. Some came into existence long ago, sometimes even in prehistory, and later they have become official roads. Other roads are new. Whatever their origin is, roads are ways for directing people. In modern society, they are the trails we are supposed to follow. As Michel de Certeau tells us (p.98): “[A] spatial order organizes an ensemble of possibilities … and interdictions” and roads are part of such a social order. If we leave them, maybe we come on private ground, or we violate some law or traffic rule.
Therefore, it is right to say that roads are manners of directing people and they are also often made that way. Roads are constructed that way that people follow them to their destinations in an orderly manner, and that way that people will avoid places where authorities don’t want to have them go. For instance, think of the main roads that avoid cities, towns and villages, discussed in my blog last week. Or, another example, parks have paths, so that the visitors don’t walk on the grass, – or not too much – even if it is allowed. Nevertheless, often people don’t follow them the prefab roads and paths. They think – intentionally or without being aware of it – that they are wiser than the planners. Often people don’t accept certain constructed roads or paths, for practical reasons, or for pleasure, or for other reasons, and they make their own shortcuts. Car drivers leave the main roads and follow secondary roads, when they think that by doing so they can reach their destinations faster or that they can avoid traffic jams; often to the annoyance of local residents and local authorities. Or it can happen that pedestrians don’t follow the constructed footpaths in a park but walk where they like and take shortcuts through the grass. When many people follow the same shortcut, finally you get a path. I think that everybody knows the spontaneous trails that come to exist in parks, on lawns, between roads, between official footpaths, etc. that are known by many names like desire paths, game trails, goat tracks, elephant paths and so on. Although there may be some slight differences between these kinds of unofficial footpaths, I want to summarize them under the name “elephant paths”. Maybe a shortcut is used only once by one person and then it will fade away. If that person uses the shortcut regularly, it has become a kind of private shortcut; a private passage. Maybe the passage will wear out or it will not. However, as soon as many people are going to use the same shortcut regularly, it will certainly wear out. Then, what was once a hardly visible trail has become a clear path, and it has become an unofficial passage; a path that came into existence by habit. It has become an “elephant path”. Once it is there, people may come to see it as an official path; as a real path. They will use it, if it leads to where they want to go. What once was a trail or even not more than a casual shortcut has become institutionalized by habit. Although by definition an elephant path originates spontaneously, sometimes it is recognized by the authorities and turned into an official path, for example by paving it. Sometimes planners leave a piece of land partially or fully unpaved, waiting till elephant paths have been created spontaneously and then paving them. Then elephant paths are used to make path networks.