Walk #2, Desire Lines

I grew up in a town called Basingstoke in the north of Hampshire in England. There's a village near us called Micheldelver and by that is Micheldelver wood where we would go walking after Sunday lunch. My parents have always viewed footpaths as optional and there were many times when we would begin walking the condoned path only for my Dad to veer off into the woods, following a 'desire line'. I used to insist that we would get lost that way but my Dad kept following the paths. One time, in the middle of winter, we had gone out walking and my Dad had followed a path down into a deep, dark, wood. The temperature suddenly plummeted and the sky, already an opalescent white started spitting out snowflakes. The flurry turned into a blizzard and my parents started to panic, my brother ran on ahead and found a woodsmans hut. We sheltered under their garage as the hut was empty. Finally the snow let up and we followed a trail made by a jeep out and back onto the path.
Desire lines are different in Tucson, unless you're up on Mount Lemmon. They are still there but not as obviously so. I was walking in Reid Park, hopeful of finding some when I came across a hill near one of the child parks, two sides of the hill were stripped bare of grass. Children must come racing up here and then barreling down the other side, maybe even on bikes. There were some children in the park and I didn't want anyone to freak out about me taking photographs so I concentrated on the desire line. Once I found one I started seeing more but then I started to wonder if these were true desire lines or just dead grass. They seemed to start but then peter out, not really going anywhere.