A thru-hiker could just think about beer and food as the day stretches on, but this 2009 trekker wondered about footpaths: how they form, how they fare, and why we follow. An award-winning magazine writer, he came up with a book that will make you see the world around you in a whole new light.

From the back cover:

In 2009, while thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, Robert Moor began to wonder about the paths that lie beneath our feet… 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.

Robert Moor. 2017.