On Trails

From a brilliant new literary voice, an astonishing exploration of how trails can help us understand the world--from insect pheromone trails to the Appalachian Trail, from neural pathways to the Internet. In 2009, Robert Moor thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail. It was the culmination of a dream he'd held since childhood and the beginning of a journey that would lead him to investigate trails of all kinds--from tiny insect trails and neural pathways to sprawling buffalo trails, highway systems, even the internet. The result of his travels, *On Trails* , explores what unites these networks and reveals in turn how trails allow us to make sense of our world. This is a book that combines the nomadic joys of *A Walk in the Woods* with the raw wisdom of *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance*. Over the course of seven years, Moor travelled the globe, hiking from the Appalachians to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. He tracked down the world's oldest...