Desire paths

I have been to Estonia several times over the past years and happily living in Eesti by now.

One thing has always amazed and shocked me: Why do Estonians (and all those Russians in Eesti) love making desire paths? I have never ever seen this so massively done.

And do they make sense? Often not. People will just walk half a meter from the sidewalk for tens of meters. Crazy.... Everywhere with grass you will see a destroyed path. So many places where you can just see the grass not growing and just becoming ugly. Both in cities as in villages.

And as said without real reason. It is not like cutting many many meters, it saves 1 second or 1 meter of extra walking.

So why? What is behind this?