This book was not what I expected. Going by the title alone, I supposed that it would be a travelogue in which the author describes his adventures on some of the world’s great hiking paths. There is some of that, but Moor also spends much time discussing the philosophy of trails. To accomplish this, it seems to me that he often veers widely away from the subject at hand. It starts with a bang in a long prologue in which the author tells of his through-hike on the Appalachian Trail. The walk from Georgia to Maine takes him several months, and he shares gems such as this: ” Some days, after many miles, I would slip into a state of near-perfect mental clarity – serene, crystalline, thought-free. I was, as the Zen sages say, just walking.” In fact, the book begins and ends with descriptions of the Appalachian Trail: the United States version in the prologue, and the International Appalachian Trail, a new concept under construction, in the chapter before the epilogue. For me, these were the most riveting sections of all.

After his fascinating account of hiking the Appalachian Trail, Moor dives deep, deep into the past with a study of the first blob-like prehistoric creatures to form pathways. From there he moves forward to trail-making ants and caterpillars. In the course of detailing the trail predilections of sheep, deer, and other animals, he devotes long sections to his immersive research into herding sheep on a Navaho reservation, stalking deer with a dedicated lifelong hunter, and visiting a rural Tennessee elephant sanctuary and a Six Flags safari zoo. One fascinating section deals with preserving indigenous culture by discovering and mapping old trails leading to significant places in personal or tribal memories. At first I was disappointed by most of these digressions, but then I realized that as a reader I had to take the author on his own terms. That’s Moor’s style: to start out on track and then take off down any side-paths that strike his fancy.

On Trails introduced me to the International Appalachian Trail, a concept I had never heard of before. In the 1990s it was first proposed to extend the U.S. trail into Canada. Later the trail was expanded even further to include remnants of the Central Pangean Mountains, of which the Appalachians formed a segment before the supercontinent Pangaea broke up and drifted apart. There are now chapters of the IAT in Greenland, Scotland, England, and continental Europe, culminating in Morocco. The author describes a guided hike through the Atlas Mountains in Morocco searching for the appropriate location for the IAT trail terminus.

On Trails is a mixed bag. As I explained above, there are some parts of it I enjoyed and savored more than others. It helps if you approach it not as a traditional travel book, but rather as a hodgepodge of philosophy, travel, history, paleontology, and nature study. Moor is a good writer, and part of the pleasure of the book is the frequent uncovering of gems of little-known esoterica. It is as if you are hiking along a trail and keep discovering all sorts of things that you’ve never heard of before.