On Trails : An Exploration

A strikingly original debut from a tremendous new talent, Rob Moor explores the nature of trails, from hiking the Appalachian trail to the biological phenomenon of how the trails of ants are formed. In the vein of Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust: A History of Walking, this book will explore the small and particular, tracing the formation of trails from the most tiny―ants, termites, tent caterpillars; neural pathways, minute fossil trails―to the vastest and most diffuse, including the International Appalachian Trail, what will be the world’s longest footpath, spanning from Alabama to Morocco. Introducing readers to a range of fascinating characters: from a French entomologist named Audrey Dussutour. who studies how ants are capable of externalizing memory, (allowing very simple creatures to make very smart decisions); to an old man in Vermont named Larry Benoit, who has been called America’s best deer hunter, to a renowned trail builder in Tennessee who fashions trails using a motorized dirt bike.As Rob re-evaluates what we think of as simple and ordinary, he is also wedding two popular genres of nonfiction: the long distance hiking memoir (Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods) with the essayistic nature writing (like that of John McPhee).Moor is that he is a great nature writer, but also a mind-bending thinker: “What entrances me about trails―what so many nature writers overlook―is that they are more than physical phenomena; a trail is a model of elegance and a lesson in cooperation. They also provide a conceptual lens that, once goggled to your eye, alters all you survey. You begin to see even the plainest things as linear, ever-optimizing, self-perpetuating.” This deep search for meaning introduces readers to experts who work with trails of all kind, outrageous hiking anecdotes and spectacular descriptions of landscapes and animal behavior. Moor’s book gives an eye-opening tour, leaving us with a much richer, prismatic take on what we constantly take for granted: how we get where we’re going.