habits of landscape

Excerpt from the book The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane

Paths are the habits of a landscape. They are acts of consensual making. It's hard to create a footpath on your own. The artist Richard Long did it once, treading a dead-straight line into desert sand by turning and turning about dozens of times. But this was a foot-mark not a footpath; it led nowhere except to its own end, and by walking it Long became a tiger pacing its cage or a swimmer doing lengths. With no promise of extension, his line was to a path what a snapped twig is to a tree. Paths connect. This is their first duty and their chief reason for being. They relate places in a literal sense, and by extension they relate people. 

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Whoa! absolutely. I could not agree more for his definition of a 'path'. Paths connect - this is so much true. They exist to connect. Connect places, us and more.

Srik

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