On Trails: An Exploration

"The best outdoors book of the year" (Sierra Club), from a debut talent who's been compared to Annie Dillard, Edward Abbey, David Quammen, and Jared Diamond. On Trails is a wondrous exploration of how trails help us understand the world--from invisible ant trails to hiking paths that span continents [...]
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"The best outdoors book of the year" (Sierra Club), from a debut talent who's been compared to Annie Dillard, Edward Abbey, David Quammen, and Jared Diamond. On Trails is a wondrous exploration of how trails help us understand the world--from invisible 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. 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. 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 the world around us? And, ultimately, how does each of us pick a path through life? With a breathtaking arc that spans from the dawn of animal life to the digital era, the whole of On Trails allows us see our world, our history, our species, and our ways of life anew. On Trails has been described as "stunning" and "wondrous" (Departures), "a wanderer's dream" (The Economist), and "a deeply thoughtful human meditation on how we walk through life" (The Boston Globe). Moor is "a philosopher on foot" (The Wall Street Journal) and "a sagacious walker and writer, guiding] us on a new journey of discovery, a different kind of road trip about roads themselves and what they mean" (Kirkus Reviews).