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On Trails: An Exploration
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Science & Technology (2016)One of the Best Books of 2016—as chosen by The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, Amazon, National Post, The Telegraph, Booklist, The Guardian Bookshop, New York’s “The Science of Us”
“The best outdoors book of the year” —Sierra Club
From a brilliant new literary voice comes a groundbreaking exploration of how trails help us understand the world—from tiny ant trails to hiking paths that span continents, from interstate highways to the Internet.
In 2009, while thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, Robert Moor began to wonder about the paths that lie beneath our feet: How do they form? Why do some improve over time while others fade? What makes us follow or strike off on our own? Over the course of the next seven years, Moor traveled the globe, exploring trails of all kinds, from the miniscule to the massive. He learned the tricks of master trail-builders, hunted down long-lost Cherokee trails, and traced the origins of our road networks and the Internet. In each chapter, Moor interweaves his adventures with findings from science, history, philosophy, and nature writing—combining the nomadic joys of Peter Matthiessen with the eclectic wisdom of Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.
Throughout, Moor reveals how this single topic—the oft-overlooked trail—sheds new light on a wealth of age-old questions: How does order emerge out of chaos? How did animals first crawl forth from the seas and spread across continents? How has humanity’s relationship with nature and technology shaped world around us? And, ultimately, how does each of us pick a path through life?
Moor has the essayist’s gift for making new connections, the adventurer’s love for paths untaken, and the philosopher’s knack for asking big questions. With a breathtaking arc that spans from the dawn of animal life to the digital era, On Trails is a book that makes us see our world, our history, our species, and our ways of life anew.
“The best outdoors book of the year” —Sierra Club
“Stunning…A wondrous nonfiction debut” —Departures
“Moor’s book is enchanting” —The Boston Globe
“A wanderer’s dream” —The Economist
“The best outdoors book of the year” —Sierra Club
From a brilliant new literary voice comes a groundbreaking exploration of how trails help us understand the world—from tiny ant trails to hiking paths that span continents, from interstate highways to the Internet.
In 2009, while thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, Robert Moor began to wonder about the paths that lie beneath our feet: How do they form? Why do some improve over time while others fade? What makes us follow or strike off on our own? Over the course of the next seven years, Moor traveled the globe, exploring trails of all kinds, from the miniscule to the massive. He learned the tricks of master trail-builders, hunted down long-lost Cherokee trails, and traced the origins of our road networks and the Internet. In each chapter, Moor interweaves his adventures with findings from science, history, philosophy, and nature writing—combining the nomadic joys of Peter Matthiessen with the eclectic wisdom of Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.
Throughout, Moor reveals how this single topic—the oft-overlooked trail—sheds new light on a wealth of age-old questions: How does order emerge out of chaos? How did animals first crawl forth from the seas and spread across continents? How has humanity’s relationship with nature and technology shaped world around us? And, ultimately, how does each of us pick a path through life?
Moor has the essayist’s gift for making new connections, the adventurer’s love for paths untaken, and the philosopher’s knack for asking big questions. With a breathtaking arc that spans from the dawn of animal life to the digital era, On Trails is a book that makes us see our world, our history, our species, and our ways of life anew.
“The best outdoors book of the year” —Sierra Club
“Stunning…A wondrous nonfiction debut” —Departures
“Moor’s book is enchanting” —The Boston Globe
“A wanderer’s dream” —The Economist
12 pages, Audiobook
First published July 12, 2016
1516 people are currently reading
21283 people want to read
About the author
Robert Moor
9 books148 followersRobert Moor has written for Harper’s, n+1, New York, and GQ, among other publications. A recipient of the Middlebury Fellowship in Environmental Journalism, he has won multiple awards for his nonfiction writing. He lives in Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,092 reviews
July 16, 2017
This book is endlessly fascinating, but don't expect it to follow a straight line. Instead, it pursues its own meandering road.
When Robert Moor hiked the Appalachian Trail back in 2009, he became interested in the history of the trail itself, and in all other kinds of trails humans follow. He wondered why we like trails, why we build so many of them, and why some paths survive and others don't. After a lot of research and a fair amount of hiking, he arrived at this book, which isn't really a hiking memoir (as I mistakenly thought it was) but more of a rambling, Malcolm-Gladwell-esque* work of nonfiction that includes discussions on nature, science, technology, history and even philosophy.
After mulling over this book for several days, I've decided it's impossible to describe, and Gladwellian is as close as I can get. Truly this is an interesting book, and I enjoyed it, even though it wasn't what I expected. Recommended for readers who like a book with a potpourri of subjects.
*Note: To be clear, Gladwell-esque is meant to be a compliment. If you are unfamiliar with his work, Malcolm Gladwell writes for The New Yorker magazine and he also has several bestselling books, which usually combine a variety of topics under one general theme, such as underdogs or trends. I've enjoyed most of his books and would recommend them.
Interesting Quotes
"I learned that the soul of a trail — its trail-ness — is not bound up in dirt and rocks; it is immaterial, evanescent, as fluid as air. The essence lies in its function: how it continuously evolves to serve the needs of its users. We tend to glorify trailblazers — those hardy souls who strike out across uncharted territory, both figurative and physical — but followers play an equally important role in creating a trail. They shave off unnecessary bends and brush away obstructions, improving the trail with each trip. It is thanks to the actions of these walkers that the trail becomes, in the words of Wendell Berry, 'the perfect adaptation, through experience and familiarity, of movement to place.' In bewildering times — when all the old ways seem to be dissolving into mire — it serves us well to turn our eyes earthward and study the oft-overlooked wisdom beneath our feet."
"There is a simple reason why we find the image of circling ants or caterpillars so troubling. The first instinct of humans who are lost in the wilderness is to cling to any trail they find and never leave it. Indeed, authorities on wilderness survival commonly recommend this tactic: 'When you find a trail stay on it,' declares a backpacking guide published by the U.S. Forest Service, in a section titled 'If You Get Lost.' A trail, the naturalist Ernest Ingersoll once wrote, is a 'happy promise to the anxious heart that you are going somewhere, and are not aimlessly wandering in a circle.' A circular trial, then, is a cruel trick, a breach of logic, almost a kind of black magic."
"Old age brings with it another kind of liberation: freedom from the doubt, anger, and restlessness of youth. The old can look back and see their decisions as a single concatenation, sheared of all the ghostly, untaken routes. Heidegger, a forest-dwelling philosopher enchanted with the earthy wisdom of the Feldweg (field path) and the Holzweg (wood path), discussed his life in this manner. Three years before his death, he wrote to his friend Hannah Arendt: 'Looking back over the whole path, it becomes possible to see that the walk through the field of paths is guided by an invisible hand, and that essentially one ads little to it.' But he was able to make that judgment only with the benefit of hindsight. Fate is an optical illusion. From the vantage of a thirty-year-old like me, life's path still bristles with spur trails and possible dead ends. And so we return, once again, to the essential question: How do we select a path through life? Which turns should we take? To what end?"
"We are born to wander through a chaos field. And yet we do not become hopelessly lost, because each walker who comes before us leaves behind a trace for us to follow. The full span of trail-making on earth, in its broadest sense — all the walks, all the stories, all the experiments, all the networks — can be seen as part of a great communal yearning to find better, longer-lasting, more supple ways of sharing wisdom and preserving it for the future."
When Robert Moor hiked the Appalachian Trail back in 2009, he became interested in the history of the trail itself, and in all other kinds of trails humans follow. He wondered why we like trails, why we build so many of them, and why some paths survive and others don't. After a lot of research and a fair amount of hiking, he arrived at this book, which isn't really a hiking memoir (as I mistakenly thought it was) but more of a rambling, Malcolm-Gladwell-esque* work of nonfiction that includes discussions on nature, science, technology, history and even philosophy.
I began to search for the deeper meaning of trails. I spent years looking for answers, which led me to yet bigger questions: Why did animal life begin to move in the first place? How does any creature start to make sense of the world? Why do some individuals lead and others follow? How did we humans come to mold our planet into its current shape? Piece by piece, I began to cobble together a panoramic view of how pathways act as an essential guiding force on this planet: on every scale of life, from microscopic cells to herds of elephants, creatures can be found relying on trails to reduce an overwhelming array of options to a single expeditious route. Without trails, we would be lost.
After mulling over this book for several days, I've decided it's impossible to describe, and Gladwellian is as close as I can get. Truly this is an interesting book, and I enjoyed it, even though it wasn't what I expected. Recommended for readers who like a book with a potpourri of subjects.
*Note: To be clear, Gladwell-esque is meant to be a compliment. If you are unfamiliar with his work, Malcolm Gladwell writes for The New Yorker magazine and he also has several bestselling books, which usually combine a variety of topics under one general theme, such as underdogs or trends. I've enjoyed most of his books and would recommend them.
Interesting Quotes
"I learned that the soul of a trail — its trail-ness — is not bound up in dirt and rocks; it is immaterial, evanescent, as fluid as air. The essence lies in its function: how it continuously evolves to serve the needs of its users. We tend to glorify trailblazers — those hardy souls who strike out across uncharted territory, both figurative and physical — but followers play an equally important role in creating a trail. They shave off unnecessary bends and brush away obstructions, improving the trail with each trip. It is thanks to the actions of these walkers that the trail becomes, in the words of Wendell Berry, 'the perfect adaptation, through experience and familiarity, of movement to place.' In bewildering times — when all the old ways seem to be dissolving into mire — it serves us well to turn our eyes earthward and study the oft-overlooked wisdom beneath our feet."
"There is a simple reason why we find the image of circling ants or caterpillars so troubling. The first instinct of humans who are lost in the wilderness is to cling to any trail they find and never leave it. Indeed, authorities on wilderness survival commonly recommend this tactic: 'When you find a trail stay on it,' declares a backpacking guide published by the U.S. Forest Service, in a section titled 'If You Get Lost.' A trail, the naturalist Ernest Ingersoll once wrote, is a 'happy promise to the anxious heart that you are going somewhere, and are not aimlessly wandering in a circle.' A circular trial, then, is a cruel trick, a breach of logic, almost a kind of black magic."
"Old age brings with it another kind of liberation: freedom from the doubt, anger, and restlessness of youth. The old can look back and see their decisions as a single concatenation, sheared of all the ghostly, untaken routes. Heidegger, a forest-dwelling philosopher enchanted with the earthy wisdom of the Feldweg (field path) and the Holzweg (wood path), discussed his life in this manner. Three years before his death, he wrote to his friend Hannah Arendt: 'Looking back over the whole path, it becomes possible to see that the walk through the field of paths is guided by an invisible hand, and that essentially one ads little to it.' But he was able to make that judgment only with the benefit of hindsight. Fate is an optical illusion. From the vantage of a thirty-year-old like me, life's path still bristles with spur trails and possible dead ends. And so we return, once again, to the essential question: How do we select a path through life? Which turns should we take? To what end?"
"We are born to wander through a chaos field. And yet we do not become hopelessly lost, because each walker who comes before us leaves behind a trace for us to follow. The full span of trail-making on earth, in its broadest sense — all the walks, all the stories, all the experiments, all the networks — can be seen as part of a great communal yearning to find better, longer-lasting, more supple ways of sharing wisdom and preserving it for the future."
January 1, 2018
Man is built to walk. Actually, man is built to jog, slowly, speaking from a physiological point of view. However you ambulate, our bones and muscles are constructed to move and keep moving. Sedentary life is no life at all (he says while sitting in a chair, typing up this review). I love to walk. If you have been reading my reviews or blog for long enough, you'll know that. This is part of the reason I was so worried when I blew my back out in late 2014 and was so relieved when my surgery in 2015 was largely successful. The thought of not being able to walk, for me, makes me almost stop breathing.
But Moor is not so concerned with the act of walking itself. He is concerned with what it is we walk on, paths and trails, and how they are formed and, sometimes, conceived and maintained. He starts with the first trails, "traces," really, to be technically correct (trails are, by definition, a place where more than one organism has trodden the same path or where one has traveled repeatedly), made by strange part-plant, part-animal organisms during the Ediacaran period, a time that I did not even know existed when I began the book. These bizarre, almost alien life forms (surely they would seem alien in the current geological age - the descriptions given to these creatures made me think that H.P. Lovecraft might have been revealing more in his fiction than we could have known before the discovery of these weird critters) left traces in mud that petrified some 500 million years ago. Their efforts were spastic, halting, and meandering, but they're the oldest traces we can find of self-propelled mobility.
From this beginning, you might think that this book then goes through subsequent eras of trail-building and use, finally reaching to the modern age.
You'd be wrong.
This book meanders. And it meanders wildly. Personally, I liked that aspect of it, but if you're looking for a concise history of trails from Point A to Point B, this is not that book. If you're looking for a more leisurely wandering through not only the history of trails, but across disciplines such as history, environmental science, technology, and anthropology, then Moor's On Trails is for you. Like any trail, it's not perfect, and the author acknowledges that (giving his personal E-mail address near the end in order to receive readers' feedback, which I think is awesome). Nor is it completely comprehensive. But like any good trail that you might walk, there is really too much to gather in over the course of one journey. I'll be revisiting this one from time to time and am curious to see how future revisions differ from this initial printing.
That stated, there were a few highlights that I found intriguing, sometimes compelling. Please excuse my meandering as I point them out, in no particular order:
Believe it or not, Moor is unafraid to dive into the depths of the philosophy of science. Though this is more of a side-trail of the work, rather than a full-on excursion, he points out some interesting thoughts, particularly those coming from a scientist acquaintance of his. Moor had asked him about the intentional falsification of data by some scientists, some of whom extend bold conjectures in order to claim scientific territory. Apparently it is not out of the ordinary for scientists to extrapolate, from their limited data, views that "reach" for the truth. Moor, in speaking with his friend, called this practice into question. The response is intriguing:
Karl Popper would have said that astrophysics and paleontology are not real science because you can't go out and sample it . . . I think absolutely the opposite. I think this is actually where science is. It's trying to guess what lies over the hill and map terra incognita. When people come in and colonize, that's just technology.
For behaviorists, chapter 2 is a must-read about individual agency vis-a-vis the group hive mind, feedback loops, and amplification mechanisms in the formation of trails. It is a great analysis of group and individual behavior!
Kudos must be given to Moor for not only collating so much theoretical information, but for living his research. For a short time, he worked as a shepherd with a Navajo couple (who spoke no English) for a number of weeks, learning about herding and trails (or, more properly, trying to keep his flock on the trails, mostly unsuccessfully). This section was cringe-inducing in its awkward hilarity. I felt sorry for Moor, who admits he didn't have a clue what he was doing. Luckily for him, none of his flock became casualties as a direct result of his ignorance - a miracle, given the mis-steps he made!
One thing that comes up again and again in this book is the fact that members of western society have a number of misconceptions about cultures and history. I was disabused of a few notions: the idea that America was truly "wild" when Europeans invaded (Native Americans actually carefully-groomed and managed their lands, particularly hunting lands within the forests of the Eastern seaboard, using strategic burning in particular to clear areas of underbrush and mosquitoes), the mistaken idea that Native American trails would, of course, take the path of least resistance (they did not - "A trail might go to great lengths to avoid enemy territory or detour to visit kinfolk; it might gravitate to sacred sites, or bend around haunted ones"), and the "fact" that modern hunting and fishing regulations were primarily an organic outgrowth of conservation efforts (actually, most of them come from medieval English laws meant to protect the local noble's hunting grounds from pesky peasants).
Even the very idea that "Wilderness" is something that pre-exists at all is a judgement error, or at least an error in perspective, according to Moor:
It may sound strange (even sacrilegious) to some, but in a very real way, wilderness is a human creation. We create it in the same sense that we create trails; we do not crate the soil or the plants, the geology or the topology (although we can, and do, shift these things). Instead, we delineate the place, by defining its boundaries, its meaning, and its use.
The author actually does an excellent job of presenting and validating this argument through numerous examples, many associated with the attempted expansion of the Appalachian Trail to the International Appalachian Trail (extending across Greenland to Scotland to Spain and even to Morocco). Far from being a "natural" phenomenon, trails are technology that define and delineate wilderness, rather than cutting "through" it.
Moor gets even further off the path of expected subject matter for this book when he delves into the ways that technology shapes the land around us and forces us to walk on trails that are dictated by the advance of technology. He does not pass a value judgement on this progression, necessarily:
In large part, the continued interest in hiking seems to stem from a desire to cut through the techscape to get to some natural substratum: to borrow MacKaye's phrase, to see the "primeval influence" beneath the "machine influence." But ironically, the act of hiking is also dependent on technology. Many of the earliest hikers relied on trains and automobiles to reach the mountains. Today, some forms of technology (like cell phones or ATVs) are considered obnoxious, while others (like water purifiers, camp stoves, and GPS locators) are excused. In either case, technology inexorably trickles into the wild, allowing hikers to reach new lands, travel in new ways, think in new terms, and optimize to new values.
This melding of technology and the wild is, well, natural. There is no natural barrier between "civilization" and "wilderness". This exclusivity is created in our own minds. Yes, there are some areas left more "natural" than others, but much of the separation is a mental construct. Moor relates the following about Eberhart, a legendary hiker that he spent some time walking with along highways and through "wilderness" areas:
The problem, [Eberhart] said, was that hikers tended to divide their lives into compartments: wilderness over here, civilization over there. "The walls that exist between each of these compartments are not there naturally," he said. "We create them. The guy that has to stand there and look at Mount Olympus to find peace and quiet and solitude and meaning - life has escaped him totally! Because it's down there in Seattle, too,on a damn downtown street. I've tried to break those walls down and de-compartmentalize my life so that I can find just as much peace and joy in that damned homebound rush-hour traffic that we were walking through yesterday."
The irony of me, a walker, sitting here at a computer typing up a review about a physical book I read (I do so prefer physical books as artifacts to e-books, though I've read both) because of my love for being out in "nature" is not lost on me. The irony of you, reading this entry about a book on walking, from the comfort of your home or library or Starbucks or wherever you are (I'm guessing you are not outside walking at the moment, but I could be wrong) shouldn't be lost on you, either!
But Moor is not so concerned with the act of walking itself. He is concerned with what it is we walk on, paths and trails, and how they are formed and, sometimes, conceived and maintained. He starts with the first trails, "traces," really, to be technically correct (trails are, by definition, a place where more than one organism has trodden the same path or where one has traveled repeatedly), made by strange part-plant, part-animal organisms during the Ediacaran period, a time that I did not even know existed when I began the book. These bizarre, almost alien life forms (surely they would seem alien in the current geological age - the descriptions given to these creatures made me think that H.P. Lovecraft might have been revealing more in his fiction than we could have known before the discovery of these weird critters) left traces in mud that petrified some 500 million years ago. Their efforts were spastic, halting, and meandering, but they're the oldest traces we can find of self-propelled mobility.
From this beginning, you might think that this book then goes through subsequent eras of trail-building and use, finally reaching to the modern age.
You'd be wrong.
This book meanders. And it meanders wildly. Personally, I liked that aspect of it, but if you're looking for a concise history of trails from Point A to Point B, this is not that book. If you're looking for a more leisurely wandering through not only the history of trails, but across disciplines such as history, environmental science, technology, and anthropology, then Moor's On Trails is for you. Like any trail, it's not perfect, and the author acknowledges that (giving his personal E-mail address near the end in order to receive readers' feedback, which I think is awesome). Nor is it completely comprehensive. But like any good trail that you might walk, there is really too much to gather in over the course of one journey. I'll be revisiting this one from time to time and am curious to see how future revisions differ from this initial printing.
That stated, there were a few highlights that I found intriguing, sometimes compelling. Please excuse my meandering as I point them out, in no particular order:
Believe it or not, Moor is unafraid to dive into the depths of the philosophy of science. Though this is more of a side-trail of the work, rather than a full-on excursion, he points out some interesting thoughts, particularly those coming from a scientist acquaintance of his. Moor had asked him about the intentional falsification of data by some scientists, some of whom extend bold conjectures in order to claim scientific territory. Apparently it is not out of the ordinary for scientists to extrapolate, from their limited data, views that "reach" for the truth. Moor, in speaking with his friend, called this practice into question. The response is intriguing:
Karl Popper would have said that astrophysics and paleontology are not real science because you can't go out and sample it . . . I think absolutely the opposite. I think this is actually where science is. It's trying to guess what lies over the hill and map terra incognita. When people come in and colonize, that's just technology.
For behaviorists, chapter 2 is a must-read about individual agency vis-a-vis the group hive mind, feedback loops, and amplification mechanisms in the formation of trails. It is a great analysis of group and individual behavior!
Kudos must be given to Moor for not only collating so much theoretical information, but for living his research. For a short time, he worked as a shepherd with a Navajo couple (who spoke no English) for a number of weeks, learning about herding and trails (or, more properly, trying to keep his flock on the trails, mostly unsuccessfully). This section was cringe-inducing in its awkward hilarity. I felt sorry for Moor, who admits he didn't have a clue what he was doing. Luckily for him, none of his flock became casualties as a direct result of his ignorance - a miracle, given the mis-steps he made!
One thing that comes up again and again in this book is the fact that members of western society have a number of misconceptions about cultures and history. I was disabused of a few notions: the idea that America was truly "wild" when Europeans invaded (Native Americans actually carefully-groomed and managed their lands, particularly hunting lands within the forests of the Eastern seaboard, using strategic burning in particular to clear areas of underbrush and mosquitoes), the mistaken idea that Native American trails would, of course, take the path of least resistance (they did not - "A trail might go to great lengths to avoid enemy territory or detour to visit kinfolk; it might gravitate to sacred sites, or bend around haunted ones"), and the "fact" that modern hunting and fishing regulations were primarily an organic outgrowth of conservation efforts (actually, most of them come from medieval English laws meant to protect the local noble's hunting grounds from pesky peasants).
Even the very idea that "Wilderness" is something that pre-exists at all is a judgement error, or at least an error in perspective, according to Moor:
It may sound strange (even sacrilegious) to some, but in a very real way, wilderness is a human creation. We create it in the same sense that we create trails; we do not crate the soil or the plants, the geology or the topology (although we can, and do, shift these things). Instead, we delineate the place, by defining its boundaries, its meaning, and its use.
The author actually does an excellent job of presenting and validating this argument through numerous examples, many associated with the attempted expansion of the Appalachian Trail to the International Appalachian Trail (extending across Greenland to Scotland to Spain and even to Morocco). Far from being a "natural" phenomenon, trails are technology that define and delineate wilderness, rather than cutting "through" it.
Moor gets even further off the path of expected subject matter for this book when he delves into the ways that technology shapes the land around us and forces us to walk on trails that are dictated by the advance of technology. He does not pass a value judgement on this progression, necessarily:
In large part, the continued interest in hiking seems to stem from a desire to cut through the techscape to get to some natural substratum: to borrow MacKaye's phrase, to see the "primeval influence" beneath the "machine influence." But ironically, the act of hiking is also dependent on technology. Many of the earliest hikers relied on trains and automobiles to reach the mountains. Today, some forms of technology (like cell phones or ATVs) are considered obnoxious, while others (like water purifiers, camp stoves, and GPS locators) are excused. In either case, technology inexorably trickles into the wild, allowing hikers to reach new lands, travel in new ways, think in new terms, and optimize to new values.
This melding of technology and the wild is, well, natural. There is no natural barrier between "civilization" and "wilderness". This exclusivity is created in our own minds. Yes, there are some areas left more "natural" than others, but much of the separation is a mental construct. Moor relates the following about Eberhart, a legendary hiker that he spent some time walking with along highways and through "wilderness" areas:
The problem, [Eberhart] said, was that hikers tended to divide their lives into compartments: wilderness over here, civilization over there. "The walls that exist between each of these compartments are not there naturally," he said. "We create them. The guy that has to stand there and look at Mount Olympus to find peace and quiet and solitude and meaning - life has escaped him totally! Because it's down there in Seattle, too,on a damn downtown street. I've tried to break those walls down and de-compartmentalize my life so that I can find just as much peace and joy in that damned homebound rush-hour traffic that we were walking through yesterday."
The irony of me, a walker, sitting here at a computer typing up a review about a physical book I read (I do so prefer physical books as artifacts to e-books, though I've read both) because of my love for being out in "nature" is not lost on me. The irony of you, reading this entry about a book on walking, from the comfort of your home or library or Starbucks or wherever you are (I'm guessing you are not outside walking at the moment, but I could be wrong) shouldn't be lost on you, either!
November 28, 2016
This wide-ranging study examines many aspects and types of trail-making. Along the way Moor thru-hikes the Appalachian Trail, herds sheep in Arizona, observes elephants, follows ancient Native American paths on deer hunting vigils, and travels to Morocco to scope out new sections for the International Appalachian Trail. At times I had trouble seeing the connections between all the disparate elements (everything from ant behavior to Cherokee language and the Internet); Moor tries for an overarching message about how we shape the earth and whether we’re following others or making our own way, but from chapter to chapter that scope is rather lost. Nonetheless, he writes very well and incorporates his research carefully.
February 10, 2021
"Complete freedom is not what a trail offers. Quite the opposite; a trail is a tactful reduction of options."
Moor states in the very first chapter that this book is not a ladder and does not lead up to any sort of conclusion, but like the trail, it winds and meanders. By and large, the wandering on this book trail was great fun: Moor recounting his through-hike on the Appalachian Trail (although this is more of a stage setter, it is definitely not the theme of the book like A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail), shepherding Navajo churro sheep in the southwest, following animal tracks and trails in Alabama, Cherokee footpaths in North Carolina, and fossilized "trails" left by long extinct sea animals in Newfoundland... he did a lot of walking in this book! A few of the story sections seemed (keeping with trail hiking parlance) "in the weeds" and "off-track" for me, but Moor circles back to the theme eventually and brings you back to the trail safe and sound.
4.5 stars. I appreciated his subject matter and his overall style.
Some more quotes that I liked and transcribed from the audio:
Re: Cherokee language and its tie to the land:
"Belt's upbringing made him acutely aware of the ties between geography and language... the landscape is encoded into the language. Cherokee syntax and diction are mountainous. The language has several fine-grained descriptions for different kinds of hills. Suffixes can be appended to nouns to indicate whether it is uphill or downhill from the speaker."
"Cultural institutions that European cultures have long relied on to perpetuate knowledge, mainly an enormous and intricately organized corpora of texts can not properly acknowledge a form of knowledge that is orally transmitted and terrestrially encoded."
"Walking creates trails. Trails, in turn, shape landscapes, and over time, landscapes serve as archives of communal knowledge and symbolic meaning."
Re: Benton MacKaye, the innovator behind the Appalachian Trail
"He railed against the lolly-poppidness of the jazz-loving, picnic-eating city dwellers, and he contrasted these human jellyfish with the strong, tough, wilderness-saavy proletariat his trail would attract. 'And now I come straight to the point of the philosophy of thru-trails!' MacKaye concluded, 'It is to organize a Barbarian invasion! It is a counter-movement to the metropolitan invasion.'"
August 27, 2018
Yazmak istediğim gibi bir yorum yazabileceğime inanmadığım için, şimdilik, yazmak istemediğim gibi bir yorum yazıyorum.
Bence kesinlikle ilham verici ve yerli yersiz insanın aklına gelip düşündürecek bir keşif süreci oldu. Çevremdeki herkesin eline kitabı tutuşturup, ''Bak! Bak ne diyor!'' diyip durdum.
Doğa-yaban-insan-vahşi-evcil-hayvan-iz-yol-yürümek-karıncalar ve filler ve biz ve birkaç salyangoz ve bir sürü soru işareti. Belki size de ilham verir. Belki kitapla deli gibi kavga edersiniz, ama bence bir şeyleri harekete geçirme gücü olduğu kesin.
Bence kesinlikle ilham verici ve yerli yersiz insanın aklına gelip düşündürecek bir keşif süreci oldu. Çevremdeki herkesin eline kitabı tutuşturup, ''Bak! Bak ne diyor!'' diyip durdum.
Doğa-yaban-insan-vahşi-evcil-hayvan-iz-yol-yürümek-karıncalar ve filler ve biz ve birkaç salyangoz ve bir sürü soru işareti. Belki size de ilham verir. Belki kitapla deli gibi kavga edersiniz, ama bence bir şeyleri harekete geçirme gücü olduğu kesin.
February 10, 2017
My incentive in reading Moor's On Trails is my own enjoyment of hiking. The book delivers so much more than an examination of walking in the woods, though. Moor is a hiker himself, what he calls a thru-hiker, one who hikes long distances over established trails of great length. He describes some of his own experiences in spending 5 months hiking the entire Appalachian Trail from its beginning in Georgia to the ending on Maine's Mount Katahdin. Moor writes interestingly on why people hike and what they get from it. Most of the 2d half is taken up with an "exploration"--his word from the title, more appropriate than meditation--of hiking itself and the love of some people for extended hikes like the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, or the Great Divide Trail. He understands those who love--sometimes need--to get out of their everyday lives and onto a trail which leads them into whatever nature, vision of wilderness, discipline, or solitude they seek. For me, the book became stronger and stronger as I read. Moor writes quite well and intelligently, so he moves eloquently through such topics as humanity's historical relation to wilderness and the impact of our newer technologies on hiking culture. By the end of the book what he's learned from a couple of his heroes, Thoreau and the Chinese poet/hermit Han-Shan, has caused him to become philosophical. The hiking trail, he writes, is merely one of the paths our lives take. He considers walking a trail to be an "untethered state." He agrees with Thoreau that walking the woods is the ultimate freedom. In describing how the hiker pares down what he carries from his life in the greater society, he writes, "In walking, we acquire more of less."
As I say, the book delivers a lot. Moor discusses not only trails like the Appalachian Trail and its history but the forerunners of every modern trail, animal trails--even fossilized ones--and Indian trails. Because trails are always the lines of least resistance used by moving animals and later followed by Indians, most of our modern highway system has paved them over in using the same routes. He spends time in explaining how the internet is also a trail. I was aware of the extension of the Appalachian Trail into Canada but didn't know that it'd recently been extended to even vault the Atlantic by engineering trails through the same Appalachian geology existing in Iceland, Spain, and Morocco. Moor's account of his part in mapping the new end of the trail in Morocco is fascinating. There's much more to this interesting book: the time he spent among Navajo shepherds studying how sheep create trails, the complexity of insect trails. There's something to be found here by everyone, especially by those who like to follow trails in the woods.
As I say, the book delivers a lot. Moor discusses not only trails like the Appalachian Trail and its history but the forerunners of every modern trail, animal trails--even fossilized ones--and Indian trails. Because trails are always the lines of least resistance used by moving animals and later followed by Indians, most of our modern highway system has paved them over in using the same routes. He spends time in explaining how the internet is also a trail. I was aware of the extension of the Appalachian Trail into Canada but didn't know that it'd recently been extended to even vault the Atlantic by engineering trails through the same Appalachian geology existing in Iceland, Spain, and Morocco. Moor's account of his part in mapping the new end of the trail in Morocco is fascinating. There's much more to this interesting book: the time he spent among Navajo shepherds studying how sheep create trails, the complexity of insect trails. There's something to be found here by everyone, especially by those who like to follow trails in the woods.
December 27, 2016
Shiiii.
I picked up this book because I figured it was about hiking, and I was in a dope bookstore that I wanted to support. Best of both worlds.
I got waaaay more from this book than I was expecting. It was an incredible exploration straight from day 0 of trails (ediacaran trails), to ants, to animal's migratory paths, to first nation's paths to wow. wow.
This was a delicious read.
I picked up this book because I figured it was about hiking, and I was in a dope bookstore that I wanted to support. Best of both worlds.
I got waaaay more from this book than I was expecting. It was an incredible exploration straight from day 0 of trails (ediacaran trails), to ants, to animal's migratory paths, to first nation's paths to wow. wow.
This was a delicious read.
March 27, 2017
Moor is a long distance walker, he took five months completing the Appalachian Trail, but rather than just the exhilaration in completing this 2190 mile journey he realised that he now had questions about just why we create trails. In exploring this phenomena he is shown some of the oldest fossil trails, he learns how and why animals do the same thing, from ants that use pheromones to guide others from the nest to sources of food. He has a go a shepherding to see how sheep make trails, and manages to mislay a complete flock in his first attempt. He joins Native Americans to see the trails in their culture and perches in a tree with Larry Benoit to gain an insight into the mind of a hunter following deer trails in a forest.
He finds out how a new trail is created when he joins a renowned trail builder in Tennessee making pathways with a quad-bike. He is asked to join the International Appalachian Trail, what will be the world’s longest footpath, spanning from Alabama to Morocco, and spends some time walking some of what could be the Moroccan section. In the final part of the book, he catches up with the Nimblewill Nomad, M.J. Eberhart. He is somewhat of a legend, as he has walked the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental Divide Trail; around 34,000 miles in total. He could be described as eccentric too, having had all his toenails removed and passed on most of his possessions bar a truck and a couple of boxes of sentimental stuff. Moor joins him for a few days and walks with him from Winnie along the roads of Texas.
Walking creates trails. Trails, in turn, shape landscapes
Moor has tremendous potential as an author but I am not entirely sure if this is a travel book, a walking book, a book on the natural world or book on the deeper philosophy on the process of placing one foot in front of another. That said, it is an eloquent set of essays and stories about the pleasures of walking along the great trails of the world. Liked the piece about technology too, it makes a change to have someone say that it can have its place, rather than being one of those who considers the mix of technology and nature to be abhorrent. It is quite American-centric, though he does venture overseas at times, but its wide-ranging scope means that it is not quite as focused as it could be hence I have only given it three stars. However, I really liked this, as he has been bold enough to take a step off the well-trodden path for the wider view. For those with and interest in walking, this should be on your to-read list.
He finds out how a new trail is created when he joins a renowned trail builder in Tennessee making pathways with a quad-bike. He is asked to join the International Appalachian Trail, what will be the world’s longest footpath, spanning from Alabama to Morocco, and spends some time walking some of what could be the Moroccan section. In the final part of the book, he catches up with the Nimblewill Nomad, M.J. Eberhart. He is somewhat of a legend, as he has walked the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental Divide Trail; around 34,000 miles in total. He could be described as eccentric too, having had all his toenails removed and passed on most of his possessions bar a truck and a couple of boxes of sentimental stuff. Moor joins him for a few days and walks with him from Winnie along the roads of Texas.
Walking creates trails. Trails, in turn, shape landscapes
Moor has tremendous potential as an author but I am not entirely sure if this is a travel book, a walking book, a book on the natural world or book on the deeper philosophy on the process of placing one foot in front of another. That said, it is an eloquent set of essays and stories about the pleasures of walking along the great trails of the world. Liked the piece about technology too, it makes a change to have someone say that it can have its place, rather than being one of those who considers the mix of technology and nature to be abhorrent. It is quite American-centric, though he does venture overseas at times, but its wide-ranging scope means that it is not quite as focused as it could be hence I have only given it three stars. However, I really liked this, as he has been bold enough to take a step off the well-trodden path for the wider view. For those with and interest in walking, this should be on your to-read list.
November 21, 2017
A slow, plodding, occasionally thought-provoking slog that meanders not entirely unpleasantly. Much like the trails it discusses, this book does not take a direct route to its subject. Instead, the reader is compelled to follow the author down tiny alleyways, which feel constricted and boring but then open up into vast and glorious vistas that eloquently capture the magnificence of The Trail. Like the trail, too, it often seems like it will never end! The best part, to me, was the Epilogue, in which we are treated to stories of two trail devotees who traded life among the rest for utter freedom on the trail.
to-read-nonfiction
July 30, 2016I have a feeling I'm going to love this book.
Note to self: read this on next hiking trip.
Note to self: read this on next hiking trip.
January 7, 2020
I love hiking trails. It's one of those things that's hard to explain when someone asks. Or it was, before I read this book.
I love hiking because there's a trail. There's a direction, a path, to follow. You just have to keep walking and eventually, sooner or later, you will get there.
Hiking isn't something that I necessarily enjoy when I'm doing it. I'm too set on reaching my destination. On achieving the goal.
A trail, for me, is like happiness. I'm rarely if ever happy in the moment, but I'm happy when looking back at an event or looking ahead to the next one.
So it is on the trail. Or, at least, the longer trails where I've already planned on a destination to reach before nightfall. Then I'm driven. We have to make it there, there isn't any time to lose.
But once I've arrived, I look back and realize how happy the trail made me, how much I actually did enjoy the journey. Upon reaching the destination I'm always eager, desperate even, to set off again.
Author Robert Moore does an incredible job here researching every aspect of trails, both human and animal, and takes a deep dive into the origin and history of trails. I wasn't quite expecting that. I went in expecting a book by a guy who'd thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail and written a book about it, and instead got a in-depth book about the role trails have played throughout time.
The book bears some similarities to Erling Kagge's tremendous Walking: One Step at a Time, but it is also very different. Where as Kagge's book focuses on walking as a healthy, mindful act, Moor's focuses on trails because of their history and their efficiency. Moor's book is also deeply American in that it showcases how wildly popular trails have become at a time when American life, and western capitalism more generally, have left generations of young people frozen in place, uncertain of where to turn and what to do in an increasingly globalized and ever more closely connected marketplace.
I did a quick scan of this book's reviews on Goodreads and was astonished that there are any negative reviews at all. The thing it seems they all have in common is that they were written by people who didn't really want to read a book about trails at all, because this is as close to a perfect book on the subject as exists. And you may not think you're really interested in trails, but trust me, read this and you will be!
There is some heavy reading here, and the going at times gets tough. Much of it, particularly the middle sections, is technical terrain, and some resolve is required. Not to say that these sections are boring, just that they're occasionally a challenge to simultaneously process while continuing to flip the pages.
It did take me two months to plow through this whole thing, after all. In that way, reading "On Trails" is much like hiking a long trail itself. There are easy bits, and there are hard bits. And, as always, the hardest part is mental.
But in both cases, the journey is absolutely worth it.
I love hiking because there's a trail. There's a direction, a path, to follow. You just have to keep walking and eventually, sooner or later, you will get there.
Hiking isn't something that I necessarily enjoy when I'm doing it. I'm too set on reaching my destination. On achieving the goal.
A trail, for me, is like happiness. I'm rarely if ever happy in the moment, but I'm happy when looking back at an event or looking ahead to the next one.
So it is on the trail. Or, at least, the longer trails where I've already planned on a destination to reach before nightfall. Then I'm driven. We have to make it there, there isn't any time to lose.
But once I've arrived, I look back and realize how happy the trail made me, how much I actually did enjoy the journey. Upon reaching the destination I'm always eager, desperate even, to set off again.
Author Robert Moore does an incredible job here researching every aspect of trails, both human and animal, and takes a deep dive into the origin and history of trails. I wasn't quite expecting that. I went in expecting a book by a guy who'd thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail and written a book about it, and instead got a in-depth book about the role trails have played throughout time.
The book bears some similarities to Erling Kagge's tremendous Walking: One Step at a Time, but it is also very different. Where as Kagge's book focuses on walking as a healthy, mindful act, Moor's focuses on trails because of their history and their efficiency. Moor's book is also deeply American in that it showcases how wildly popular trails have become at a time when American life, and western capitalism more generally, have left generations of young people frozen in place, uncertain of where to turn and what to do in an increasingly globalized and ever more closely connected marketplace.
I did a quick scan of this book's reviews on Goodreads and was astonished that there are any negative reviews at all. The thing it seems they all have in common is that they were written by people who didn't really want to read a book about trails at all, because this is as close to a perfect book on the subject as exists. And you may not think you're really interested in trails, but trust me, read this and you will be!
There is some heavy reading here, and the going at times gets tough. Much of it, particularly the middle sections, is technical terrain, and some resolve is required. Not to say that these sections are boring, just that they're occasionally a challenge to simultaneously process while continuing to flip the pages.
It did take me two months to plow through this whole thing, after all. In that way, reading "On Trails" is much like hiking a long trail itself. There are easy bits, and there are hard bits. And, as always, the hardest part is mental.
But in both cases, the journey is absolutely worth it.
October 30, 2016
Ranks with the likes of Annie Dillard and Edward Abbey, an important book for the modern nature reader: Read my review in Chicago Review of Books.
https://chireviewofbooks.com/2016/08/...
https://chireviewofbooks.com/2016/08/...
November 23, 2022
4.5! Super big fan of this book! I got way more out of it than I was expecting... I starting reading it because I thought it was mostly about Moor's experience thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, but it ended up being a really thorough and beautiful exploration of trails in general ranging from hiking trails, to ant trails, to the trails that wild elephants make. It's hard for me to write a super cohesive review of this book, so here are some things that this book made me think about/some things I learned along the way: It made me think about how abysmally little I know about the land that I hike on and how I should be much more aware and also grateful to Indigenous people who have more than likely started a large majority of the trails that I use, it made me think about the connection between technology and nature and how the use of technology can actually drastically improve my experience in the outdoors, it made me think about all that we have to learn from other animals and the connections that we have to them, I learned about the history of being outside and hiking as a leisure activity, I learned about the history of the creation of the Appalachian Trail, it made me think about and appreciate the thought that goes into making modern day trails and the beauty of connecting old already made trails to new trails, it made me think about the reason why I hike/backpack and enjoy being outdoors, it made me think about the connection that trails provide (in so many senses of the word), and it made me want to thru-hike that much more. ALSO I learned that an International Appalachian Trail exists and I learned the history and process of connecting that as well. Sorry for another ramble (I actually wrote all my thoughts down in a notebook this time for optimal thought to Goodread review transfer). Read this book though! I would love to know your thoughts! .5 stars off because I didn't love that the book wasn't always super cohesive-it kinda meandered (which I suppose makes sense for this book) but I didn't totally love it.
September 6, 2025
This book is a memoir and ode to nature trails told through a mix of travel writing and science journalism. It blends together science, history, and philosophical musings. Robert Moor examines the origins and uses of trails in different contexts and locations. He draws on his own experiences of hiking the Appalachian Trail. He investigates uses of trails by various animals (from ant colonies to elephants), especially for migration paths. It is wide-ranging in scope and includes Moor’s travels around the globe as he seeks answers to questions about why trails exist where they do and how they initially developed.
Moor writes in first-person to relate his hiking experiences and third person for reporting scientific and historical facts. He examines the tension between human desire for wilderness experiences and our inevitable impact on natural spaces. It is more wide-ranging than expected. Do not expect anything like Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, so those seeking adventure or straightforward hiking memoirs may be disappointed. I particularly enjoyed learning about the recent expansion of the Appalachian Trail beyond the US, and even beyond North America. It is worth reading for those interested in nature writing and environmental topics. For me, it was educational and informative.
Moor writes in first-person to relate his hiking experiences and third person for reporting scientific and historical facts. He examines the tension between human desire for wilderness experiences and our inevitable impact on natural spaces. It is more wide-ranging than expected. Do not expect anything like Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, so those seeking adventure or straightforward hiking memoirs may be disappointed. I particularly enjoyed learning about the recent expansion of the Appalachian Trail beyond the US, and even beyond North America. It is worth reading for those interested in nature writing and environmental topics. For me, it was educational and informative.
February 7, 2017
A good book that admittedly I was stopped from appreciating to its fullest by the second worst narrator I’ve ever listened to. Let’s get that out of the way then- the audiobook was poorly edited, the sound was not normalized, many sentences were repeated, and the narrator did “accents” which were almost ALWAYS inappropriate to the speaker and were often too nasally and/or quiet. The narrator treated the audiobook like an acting reel, and that probably also explains why I’d never heard of him before.
So if you take anything away from this review let it be to read the actual book!
As for the actual information, I started and stopped this book so many times because of the narrator, that its hard for me to critique. I felt it started a bit slow, and I was definitely hoping for a little bit more about trails, but in the end, I thought the information presented was really lovely. My favorite section came at the end when he discussed the formation of information pathways (ie encyclopedias and online) and it was really fascinating and I wished it could’ve a bit longer. All in all definitely worthy of the praise that it has received.
So if you take anything away from this review let it be to read the actual book!
As for the actual information, I started and stopped this book so many times because of the narrator, that its hard for me to critique. I felt it started a bit slow, and I was definitely hoping for a little bit more about trails, but in the end, I thought the information presented was really lovely. My favorite section came at the end when he discussed the formation of information pathways (ie encyclopedias and online) and it was really fascinating and I wished it could’ve a bit longer. All in all definitely worthy of the praise that it has received.
June 9, 2019
Show-offy in a juvenile, self-admiring, college-y way. Only truly compelling when discussing actual hiking trails and hiking. Otherwise, an overwritten, trying-too-hard hash of random topics in which the author has no expertise, gratuitous name-droppy quotes from Han-shan, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Thoreau, Aristotle, et al., and Ted-Talk-style restatements of banalities as purportedly profound insight. At least half of this book should have been cut by a competent editor.
There must be a word for this kind of writing, which is so prevalent in this kind of Hudson News bestseller: restating something so banal as to not merit mention, forcing it into print, in the hopes of gaslighting your unsuspecting audience into thinking that some previously obscure thought has been articulated into clarity. E.g, “Trails are leading us somewhere, and we make them as we walk them . . . .” Etc. It’s a cheap but popular trick—seemingly effective in this kind of self-consciously “smart” and “thoughtful” popular non-fiction. It drove me nuts.
There must be a word for this kind of writing, which is so prevalent in this kind of Hudson News bestseller: restating something so banal as to not merit mention, forcing it into print, in the hopes of gaslighting your unsuspecting audience into thinking that some previously obscure thought has been articulated into clarity. E.g, “Trails are leading us somewhere, and we make them as we walk them . . . .” Etc. It’s a cheap but popular trick—seemingly effective in this kind of self-consciously “smart” and “thoughtful” popular non-fiction. It drove me nuts.
May 10, 2018
Non si parla soltanto di piccoli e grandi viaggi a piedi, di tracce e di sentieri. In questo libro c'è davvero molto di più, anche a un livello spirituale.
Viaggiamo per il mondo lungo sentieri disegnati molto tempo prima che nascessimo. Fin dal nostro primo vagito, troviamo una vasta gamma di strutture – «percorsi spirituali», «carriere professionali», «percorsi filosofici», «percorsi artistici», «vie al benessere», «sentieri della virtù»: che la famiglia, la società e la specie hanno predisposto per noi. In tutti questi casi, i termini «percorso», «sentiero», «via» non sono utilizzati a caso. Proprio come i sentieri concreti, questi percorsi astratti guidano e al tempo stesso vincolano le nostre azioni, ci conducono lungo una sequenza di passi, avanzando verso gli obiettivi che ci siamo prefissati. Senza questi percorsi, ognuno di noi sarebbe costretto ad aprirsi una strada nella wilderness della vita, lottando per la sopravvivenza, ripetendo i medesimi errori e reinventando le stesse soluzioni.
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Questo libro, con il suo andamento apertamente obliquo e tortuoso, è una ricerca della saggezza dei sentieri. Si tratta della saggezza necessaria per raggiungere gli obiettivi che ognuno di noi si pone, facendoci strada in un territorio sconosciuto, che si tratti di un fondale marino sabbioso, di un nuovo campo della conoscenza, o della vita umana in tutta la sua ricchezza. È una saggezza profondamente umana, profondamente animale, con un’enorme rilevanza sul nostro futuro personale e collettivo.
Viaggiamo per il mondo lungo sentieri disegnati molto tempo prima che nascessimo. Fin dal nostro primo vagito, troviamo una vasta gamma di strutture – «percorsi spirituali», «carriere professionali», «percorsi filosofici», «percorsi artistici», «vie al benessere», «sentieri della virtù»: che la famiglia, la società e la specie hanno predisposto per noi. In tutti questi casi, i termini «percorso», «sentiero», «via» non sono utilizzati a caso. Proprio come i sentieri concreti, questi percorsi astratti guidano e al tempo stesso vincolano le nostre azioni, ci conducono lungo una sequenza di passi, avanzando verso gli obiettivi che ci siamo prefissati. Senza questi percorsi, ognuno di noi sarebbe costretto ad aprirsi una strada nella wilderness della vita, lottando per la sopravvivenza, ripetendo i medesimi errori e reinventando le stesse soluzioni.
---
Questo libro, con il suo andamento apertamente obliquo e tortuoso, è una ricerca della saggezza dei sentieri. Si tratta della saggezza necessaria per raggiungere gli obiettivi che ognuno di noi si pone, facendoci strada in un territorio sconosciuto, che si tratti di un fondale marino sabbioso, di un nuovo campo della conoscenza, o della vita umana in tutta la sua ricchezza. È una saggezza profondamente umana, profondamente animale, con un’enorme rilevanza sul nostro futuro personale e collettivo.
November 3, 2024
What a charmer. Robert Moor’s book, born of his through-hike of the Appalachian trail and a consequent curiosity of trails, is a push/pull between teleology and discursion. Near the end of the book, Moor talks about an international conference in Iceland to discuss the future of the new, international leg of the Appalachian Trail (stemming from the observation that the geological history of Appalachian rocks is not confine to the US, or to North America). A question arose: did the trail need to be linear? Could it accommodate historical European spur trails? Could it veer off on side paths to bring hikers to beautiful vistas or cultural markers, even if the rocks under their feet weren’t Appalachian? It was an existential question, poking into what the trail was for, and what it wanted to be. It’s the same question Moor asks generally through this exploration, which spirals through elephant paths, ant trails, internet nodes, the commercialization of Mt Washington, Cherokee linguistics, and a perma-hiker named Nimblewill Nomad who hikes from gas station to gas station around America. Does a trail have an ultimate meaning? If so, how can that accommodate their wild diversity of culture and context? Why is a Cherokee path through a landscape different than a deer’s, and why is the national park hiking trail nearby different again still? And what do they all still have in common? This is a book of meandering and exploring, striving for and usually eschewing definitive answers. It’s also just loads of fun. Highly recommend.
November 16, 2017
Like the very best of trails, this book meanders through a layered landscape connecting the personal within a historical and cultural context, with lots detours for philosophical observations, both the authors and the dozens of people he tracks down to visit.
Even nicer, he invites reader participation. RM is no fly-by-night journalist. He does not so much interview his experts, he tags along, often assuming a small but crucial role in the process of grounding himself solidly in experience.
July 23, 2023
I loved this book from start to finish. The concept of a “trail” laid out in so many different contexts and timelines was a new perspective I didn’t know I needed. I also love how often it was brought back to the Appalachian Trail and New England (should I quit my job and hike the AT???) It was so well researched - from fossils to ant trails to elephant herds to geology and culture.
I have never been able to put into words what draws me to the mountains. This book was able to pinpoint it so perfectly, I resonated with it so much. A must read for anyone who feels a longing for trails and paths that connect us to nature, ourselves, and most importantly others.
I have never been able to put into words what draws me to the mountains. This book was able to pinpoint it so perfectly, I resonated with it so much. A must read for anyone who feels a longing for trails and paths that connect us to nature, ourselves, and most importantly others.
December 20, 2017
I really did not know what to expect from this book. It was highly recommended to my by an older man (he was probably about my age -- ha ha) I encountered on a trail while backpacking in the High Uintas of Utah. "Just read it," he said. "There's no way I can describe it."
The man was quite the salesman. Shortly after getting home from my trip I ordered it from Amazon (my small-town public library doesn't seem to have funds to buy books like this). Unfortunately, I was not as enthralled with it as my short-time hiking buddy.
It was not bad. In fact, some portions were awesome as the author described hikes he had taken, people he had met while hiking, and the history of trails and trail making which, he emphasizes, is not a strictly human venture, because nearly all animals, even lowly single-celled animals, naturally tend to blaze trails for others of their kind to follow.
More than anything, this is a book about the philosophy of hiking and following trails -- both the literal and the metaphorical types, as, for example, the two roads that "diverged in a yellow wood."
My favorite part of this book was the epilogue in which the author describes a nearly 70-year-old constant walker/hiker known as Nimblewill Nomad who, years before, had become increasingly dissatisfied with modern life and began traveling all over the U.S. on foot and carrying almost nothing. He gave up nearly all his earthly possessions,
As someone, myself, who recognizes the shortcomings of modern-day life, due in large part to our separation from the natural world to which our basic DNA is programmed, I find it impossible to properly express the satisfaction and the at-home comfort I feel when I am on the trail -- walking through nature along paths prepared by and traveled by many others (who?) before me.
This book seems to be the author's attempt to explain and make sense of that same feeling.
The man was quite the salesman. Shortly after getting home from my trip I ordered it from Amazon (my small-town public library doesn't seem to have funds to buy books like this). Unfortunately, I was not as enthralled with it as my short-time hiking buddy.
It was not bad. In fact, some portions were awesome as the author described hikes he had taken, people he had met while hiking, and the history of trails and trail making which, he emphasizes, is not a strictly human venture, because nearly all animals, even lowly single-celled animals, naturally tend to blaze trails for others of their kind to follow.
More than anything, this is a book about the philosophy of hiking and following trails -- both the literal and the metaphorical types, as, for example, the two roads that "diverged in a yellow wood."
My favorite part of this book was the epilogue in which the author describes a nearly 70-year-old constant walker/hiker known as Nimblewill Nomad who, years before, had become increasingly dissatisfied with modern life and began traveling all over the U.S. on foot and carrying almost nothing. He gave up nearly all his earthly possessions,
but what he had gained was the freedom to walk full-time, which felt to him like freedom itself. "As if with each step these burdens were slowly but surely being drained from my body, down to the tread way beneath my feet and onto the path behind me. . . .
"Every year I've got less and less, and every year I'm a happier man. I just wonder what it's going to be like when I don't have anything. That's the way we come, and that's the way we go. I'm just preparing for that a little in advance, I guess."
As someone, myself, who recognizes the shortcomings of modern-day life, due in large part to our separation from the natural world to which our basic DNA is programmed, I find it impossible to properly express the satisfaction and the at-home comfort I feel when I am on the trail -- walking through nature along paths prepared by and traveled by many others (who?) before me.
This book seems to be the author's attempt to explain and make sense of that same feeling.
February 14, 2018
I wanted to underline a lot of great lines and brilliant insight throughout this book. At many points, especially when the author is writing from firsthand personal experience on the trail, I was felt as though I were reading my new favorite book (Five Stars!). Other parts, especially when the author is trying to translate complex scientific history/theory, were dry and dragging and something I was forcing myself to get through (Two Stars!).
So, this is to say there are very high and low (peaks and valleys!) points throughout the reading experience, but I urge you to stick with it once you start. The prologue was one of my favorite pieces of writing ever, where the author gives his personal background and everything that led him to hike the Appalachian Trail (and that resulting experience, think Wild by Strayed). But then the next chapter is about ancient fossils and micro trails... which I think would fascinate many science readers. However, once the author makes the trip to see them himself things pick back up again.
Each time the author actually visits the expert, engages in the trail exploration, and gives you that POV, I love this book. Fortunately there's more of that than the drier challenging work of distilling complex science into understandable stories and language.
Where do trails come from? How do animals (insects and elephants) create, use, and optimize trails? Are humans similar? What does this tell us about ourselves, our history, our landscape, and our world? Everything. If you ever let your mind wander during a walk, consider nature and instinct and philosophy and religion. When you can walk any direction across the earth, why do many prefer trails? Are they designed for or created by user experience? Are they natural or falsified?
All these questions and more, answered over millions of years and a dozen experts and studies, and answered in this engaging, thoughtful, well written book that's part science, theology, personal history, nature writing, philosophy, design thinking, landscape architecture and literature, and more. There's something for almost everyone, which makes the reading experience varied - much like a walk into the woods when you don't know what's ahead.
So, this is to say there are very high and low (peaks and valleys!) points throughout the reading experience, but I urge you to stick with it once you start. The prologue was one of my favorite pieces of writing ever, where the author gives his personal background and everything that led him to hike the Appalachian Trail (and that resulting experience, think Wild by Strayed). But then the next chapter is about ancient fossils and micro trails... which I think would fascinate many science readers. However, once the author makes the trip to see them himself things pick back up again.
Each time the author actually visits the expert, engages in the trail exploration, and gives you that POV, I love this book. Fortunately there's more of that than the drier challenging work of distilling complex science into understandable stories and language.
Where do trails come from? How do animals (insects and elephants) create, use, and optimize trails? Are humans similar? What does this tell us about ourselves, our history, our landscape, and our world? Everything. If you ever let your mind wander during a walk, consider nature and instinct and philosophy and religion. When you can walk any direction across the earth, why do many prefer trails? Are they designed for or created by user experience? Are they natural or falsified?
All these questions and more, answered over millions of years and a dozen experts and studies, and answered in this engaging, thoughtful, well written book that's part science, theology, personal history, nature writing, philosophy, design thinking, landscape architecture and literature, and more. There's something for almost everyone, which makes the reading experience varied - much like a walk into the woods when you don't know what's ahead.
Read
June 20, 2017The Overdrive audio for this returned to the library as I was on the final chapter - I'm reserving final judgement until I get to hear those last words!
October 5, 2018
This book is at times an amazingly enjoyable experience, and at other times feels like an endless slog - much like the ups and downs one tends to have while embarked upon an actual long trek. It took me many months to read, although I am glad I stuck with it in the end - both the final pages, and especially the epilogue, were very much worth reading.
I began the book on a trip back east where I had the opportunity to walk some of the Appalachian Trail through New Jersey, and I was completely enthralled by his experience and also the history of the Appalachian Trail. The book starts to meander quite a bit after that, with long sections dedicated to insect trails and herding trails - you have to be truly dedicated and focused through there - and only due to that lack of ability to capture and keep my attention do I lower my rating to four stars.
The philosophical meanderings I found to be a true treat, as are any of the details concerning the history of trail development. I have included several quotes in my comments as I read, although this one from near the end captured the essence of the book best:
"This book, in its admittedly oblique and winding way, has been a search for the wisdom of trails. It is the wisdom required to reach one’s ends while making one’s way across an unknown landscape, whether it be a sandy sea floor, a new field of knowledge, or the full expands of a human life. It is deeply human, this wisdom, deeply animal- and it has tremendous bearing on our personal and collective future."
I began the book on a trip back east where I had the opportunity to walk some of the Appalachian Trail through New Jersey, and I was completely enthralled by his experience and also the history of the Appalachian Trail. The book starts to meander quite a bit after that, with long sections dedicated to insect trails and herding trails - you have to be truly dedicated and focused through there - and only due to that lack of ability to capture and keep my attention do I lower my rating to four stars.
The philosophical meanderings I found to be a true treat, as are any of the details concerning the history of trail development. I have included several quotes in my comments as I read, although this one from near the end captured the essence of the book best:
"This book, in its admittedly oblique and winding way, has been a search for the wisdom of trails. It is the wisdom required to reach one’s ends while making one’s way across an unknown landscape, whether it be a sandy sea floor, a new field of knowledge, or the full expands of a human life. It is deeply human, this wisdom, deeply animal- and it has tremendous bearing on our personal and collective future."
March 6, 2017
I could not listen past the narrator who was distracting and annoying. He came up with ridiculous voices for any person quoted in the book. Every woman was soft spoken, dejected, and oddly Southern. The way he gave voice to those who lived in the south was offensive. I am sure the content of the narration was interesting. I simply couldn't focus on it. Plus, sentences were repeated and there were long silences, sometimes minutes long.
July 30, 2016
Amazing read. A beautiful compilation of personal, scientific, historical, and philosophical writings that wanders from interesting to funny to incredibly moving. It's the kind of book that makes you want to stop and think almost every paragraph, and also to keep going and going so that you can hear more about what the author has to say.
May 6, 2018
This book tried to be too many things that all individually could have made for very compelling stories, but by trying to tackle everything, it came across as a muddled mess.
The author's voice could have benefited from more vigorous editor oversight. He often reminded me of the tone of a first year English graduate student, unfortunately
The author's voice could have benefited from more vigorous editor oversight. He often reminded me of the tone of a first year English graduate student, unfortunately
February 9, 2017
This is one of the best books I've read in a while and definitely my favorite non-fiction in years. Fantastic writer! Everyone should read this.
May 10, 2021
Favorite book I’ve read this year.
March 11, 2019
Extraordinario libro. Me ha encantado. Hay partes realmente brillantes, otras en cambio se hacen más monótonas. El tema me parece fascinante: los caminos. Hay muchas páginas que tienen como fondo Estados Unidos y la Ruta de los Apalaches. Libro escrito con mucha pasión y alma, y con la experiencia de conocer el terreno como caminante.
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