ABSTRACT
The word “sorites” is derived from a Greek word for heaps, and the heap is a well known sorites. Suppose that sand is the stuff in the offing. Sand comes in grains as well as heaps. There are infinitely many grains of sand on the plane. But it seems clear that the array of sand on the plane is too flat and sparse to make a heap there. More grains will land against the inside of the wall than the outside, so the wall will thicken inward more quickly than outward. The salience of the number of grains in a heap is as old as the paradox of the heap, but the region on which a heap sits is hidden under the heap. One natural way to try to grasp the structure of a configuration of grains on a patch starts from the idea of a path through the configuration.
