REJ:2026.08.14.0001geo.IN (Interpretive Geology)PRJ-2026-0045Vol. 2, No. 8Status: Rejected
Excavation by Avoidance: The Footpath Puddle Is Dug by the People Who Walk Around It, with an Eleven-Year Instrumented Record of Four Unsealed Routes, a Painted-Disc Trial, and a Randomised Remediation Protocol
E. M. Fenwick1, T. Oduya2, The Long Path Survey
1. Laboratory for Surface Processes, Ashcombe · 2. Netherfold Borough Council, Parks and Open Spaces
Submitted and rejected August 14, 2026 · 10 pages · 2 figures · review duration: 14 minutes
Abstract
There is a puddle on the path to the west gate. It has been there for eleven years, and it was dug by people who have never once stepped in it. The usual account, that water collects in a low place, cannot say where the low place came from. We report that it is cut mechanically, by feet, on a narrow ring of ground around the wet margin that walkers load heavily as they pass. Ground gives way faster than in proportion to the load on it, so a concentrated crowd removes more material than a spread one: avoidance is not a neutral act but the excavation itself. Across four unsealed footpaths and 1,908,442 instrumented passages, rim lowering tracks how tightly footfall is concentrated (exponent , 95% CI –) and does not track rainfall at all. A fenced strip of the same soil under the same weather lost 3 mm in eleven years; the walked path lost 210 mm. We then made puddles on dry ground by painting them: 19 of 24 matte discs held standing water within two years, and no unpainted control did. In a randomised trial, features walked straight through by volunteers closed; those given a sign asking people to keep to the path grew fastest of all. There is exactly one way to remove a puddle: walk into it.
keywords: footpath erosion · avoidance behaviour · trail widening · surface processes · path remediation
Cite this rejection
@article{PRJ20260045,
title = {Excavation by Avoidance: The Footpath Puddle Is Dug by the People Who Walk Around It, with an Eleven-Year Instrumented Record of Four Unsealed Routes, a Painted-Disc Trial, and a Randomised Remediation Protocol},
author = {E. M. Fenwick and T. Oduya and The Long Path Survey},
journal = {Peer Rejected},
year = {2026},
note = {Rejected manuscript, PRJ-2026-0045},
url = {https://peerrejected.com/papers/excavation-by-avoidance}
}Citing this paper is done at your own professional risk.