"What you see in the image above is actually called a “
desire path”
(also known as a desire line, social trail, cow path, goat track, pig
trail, or bootleg trail). Don’t ask us about those last ones — Wikipedia
told us so. Desire paths are essentially man-made trails that don’t
follow established paths. They’re usually shortcuts created by foot or
bicycle traffic to avoid longer routes or supplement nonexistent ones.
There is even an entire
Flickr group and
Reddit group devoted to this."
