On Trails

Produktbeschreibung

"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, 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. 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, On Trails is a book that makes us see our world, our history, our species, and our ways of life anew"--Book jacket flap. 

Autoreninfo

Hailed by The Wall Street Journal as a “philosopher on foot,â€� Robert Moor is the bestselling author of On Trails and In Trees. Translated into more than a dozen languages, On Trails garnered the National Outdoor Book Award, the Pacific Northwest Book Award, and the William Saroyan International Prize. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harperâ€Ös, New York magazine, Outside, Emergence, and n+1, among other publications. He lives in Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia.