Huella ... picada

[aleCcowaN]

In Argentina, a huella is a specific type of country lane consisting of two parallel bare stripes of ground caused by the traffic of, afortime, wagons or, nowadays, motor vehicles.

They are two one-foot wide stripes of compacted soil separated by a 4 to 5 feet wide stripe covered with grass and herbs. The odd vehicle using it both compacts the ground its wheels touches, so roots are suffocated and any new germination prevented, and mows the vegetation in all its wide, giving it its peculiar look.

Not to be confused with picada, which is just one stripe made by pedestrians and any kind of bike, sometimes cutting through
denser vegetation.

How do you call them in English? I mean, how country folks call them.

A city boy would call them un caminito precario and una veredita precaria, no to use any cuss term.

IA "recharged" dictionaries are offering me uninteligent terms, yet looking truly artificial.

[Rusty]

The only terms I can think of off the top of my head are 'country road', 'country lane', and 'dirt road'.

[poli]

Those huellas that refer to are called ruts in English. Dirt roads often are rutted. Be careful driving on them.

[wrholt]

For several years while I was growing up my family lived in a rural community in a house located along a dirt road, one of several dead-end and through dirt roads in the town and neighboring towns. The roadways were bare, packed earth, with nothing growing on them, and they were regularly maintained by grading/scraping to smooth out washboarding and potholes and repair any washed-out areas due to heavy rains.

What aleCcowaN calls a "huella" wouldn't be called a "dirt road", unless it were *not* regularly maintained by periodic treatment. Vehicle paths such as a "huella" might be called a "logging road" or a "fire road", and in my hometown "logging road" would be more likely, because most roads like that were used only for access by loggers for hauling logs out to the local factory, which milled local wood into products such as dowels, flower pot stakes, and wooden toy parts. However, in talking with a friend of mine who is from Texas, he preferred the word "track", which I think also works. For me, the choice of "track", "logging road", "fire road" or something else depends on where you are and the typical manner in which it local folk use it.

The "picada" I would call a "trail", "game trail", "hiking trail", "path", "hiking path", "track". For me, a "path" implies that it was made and used primarily by people, and may be shorter, or may be in a park-like area, and may be close to or in a built-up area. A "trail" or "track" is probably longer, may have been created by either animals or people, and is probably farther from areas that are built up.

[aleCcowaN]

Thank you Rusty, poli and Bill. Very complete reply, I must add.

I found the term rut may match Spanish rodada, related to the groove-like marks the wheels leave on the ground by repeteadly following the same exact path.

Game trail and hiking path are definitively picada. The curious thing is I knew the terms but fail to associate them, maybe because humble picadas aren't worth of trail blazers and athletic hikers.

Dirt roads certainly don't need manteinance in the Pampas, as the typical soil, pampean loess, from volcanic origin, becomes very hard once it's compacted and it loses its organic content. Grazing animales and pick-ups (especially the local historical Rastrojero) keep the vegetation short and tidy.