cover image On Trails: An Exploration

On Trails: An Exploration

Robert Moor. Simon & Schuster, $25 (320p) ISBN 978-1-4767-3921-2

In this engrossing meditation on trails in animal and human societies, journalist Moor surveys the natural and social histories of trail-making, from the half-billion-year-old fossilized trails of Ediacaran blobs to the pheromone trails of ants, the well-judged and emotionally meaningful trails of elephants (they may carve routes to the graves of relatives), and the ancient Native American trails that underlie much of the modern U.S. road network. He styles these disparate trails as a kind of "external memory" whereby, as one individual follows in the tracks of another for prosaic reasons, a larger template for collective movement is unwittingly constructed. In fine participant-journalist fashion, the author dives into the trail-blazing himself, doing a stint as a shepherd trying to guide wayward sheep and goats through the countryside; mapping out hiking trails in Morocco, where the locals are baffled by the notion of foreigners traipsing around on barren mountainsides; and walking the Appalachian Trail, where exhaustion and rain are leavened by intense camaraderie. Moor combines vivid reportage told in supple prose with lucid explorations of science and history in an absorbing account of how travelers shape and are shaped by the land they pass through. Agent: Bonnie Nadell, Hill Nadell Literary Agency. (July)