Paths

Paths defy urban planners. Where routes are suggested by tarmac and stone the free of thought, those lost in dreams with only a nose for home to steer will always take the natural route, all finding agreement not through any consultation but from somewhere much deeper. Animals from rabbits to deer, from cows to sheep do the same, carving the land in a record of collective short cutting. These paths are seasonal, higher ground is sought as lower paths catch the flow of water and melt in to mud.

This network of least resistance exists in parallel to the routes of the urban planner offering a different way to negotiate the world. They lead across corners, breach borders, go through woodland, round the backs of houses, slumping down embankments to follow streams to the narrowest point then to leap across and sneak through holes from gaps in fences. They take time to form but no consideration or conscious design. They are oppositional to planning.

Whilst I was ill I came to think of my brain as a winter field. Each time I followed a path of thinking it scored the ground. After a while it became too rutted by previous compounded thought tracks that were difficult to steer free from. Each approach to the  gate and freedom found my wheels channeled in the muck, returning the same stolid journey.

The brain can become marked by repetition. You can see irrational stereotyping in others, much harder to see in yourself. Resistance is the way to repair. All Learning feels uncomfortable. Making fresh pathways requires hard effort and a scythe to clear the dense undergrowth. It requires the strength to abandon all you believe.

It seems unsurprising that all journeys of the spirit are compared to paths, not to roads.