Today: I walk on desire lines
It happens now 20 or 25 times per hike: walking along, usually on the phone with my parents or brother or a close friend, I have to stop as another human being enters the scene. I make eye contact, silently asking to negotiate what will happen next. More often than not, the answer is clear: they’re not slowing down or stepping off the trail to create at least 6 feet between us. More often than not, I’m climbing up the side of a hill, turning my face away from their casual exhalation of breath. It didn’t used to be this way.
I’ve started to look for offramps, for the slightest bit of a clearing that could guide me toward minimum safe distance. I think others must be hunting for the same thing, because these little temporary escape routes are starting to look more pronounced. Easier to find. This has made me think about landscape architecture. It’s made me think about desire lines.
You’ve probably seen many. They’re strung all over most of our planned landscapes and designed spaces. You walk on a trail and see it, a narrow dirt line leading who knows where. Often, they head to bodies of water. Sometimes, makeout spots.
But they’re all about desire.
What do we desire on this trail? What are we carving into this landscape, for ourselves and each other?
We want to live. We want each other to live. We take a step away to help that happen. I plunge my fingers into soil to get a grip and haul myself away from you. Do you see? Do you understand? I just want us both to be here when it’s time, again, for casual breath.
What is a desire line but a memento of need, a monument that we didn’t accept what was given and found other new paths of reaching that need. That we don’t accept these as our only options: that to be here is not to be unsafe. To be here is not to need to occupy center stage, to elbow you out. That I choose to climb up the sides of this hill to keep you from harm and to keep you up here with me.
I wonder, by the end, when I no longer have to scamper away from you, what we will have carved into these hillsides, these arcs away from each other? The different monuments we’ll leave behind to memorialize how we tried. How we feared.
Like when we used to practice making hearts with scissors. What you do is you cut an arc into the paper — you try to picture in your mind what you hope will happen. That when you open it up again you’ll find something full, something you recognize, something you can share.
Proof that desire never ends.
A map of our desire — these whorls that go nowhere. They curl in on themselves, a record of our need to turn away, to stay home, to live.
I’ve decided to give up my beloved hiking trails for now. It’s too much fear, too much risk. Which is no huge sacrifice, in the end, really. We break new trails. Find new ways. We hope for another day. We look forward to another time, when it’s right, when we can really and truly open up again. Unfold. Hearts full.
