Trailism

On Trails: An Exploration

On Trails: An Exploration

“On Trails: An Exploration” by Robert Moor is on my reading list now, I think, but I may wait for a few more reviews before digging in as some of them are not so good. Not that I let reviews dictate my bucket list of books to read, but I’m too busy to explore a trail I might regret. An excerpt of synopsis is below:

โ€œOn Trailsโ€ is an engaging blend of travelogue, sociology, history and philosophy that might be summed up as a meditation on the centrality of trails to animal and human life…Moor starts off in Newfoundland, where he goes to have a look at what are thought to be the worldโ€™s oldest trails, left some 565 million years ago by primitive creatures called Ediacarans but discovered only eight years ago along the islandโ€™s coastline. Moorโ€™s scientific informant speculates that the fossilized Ediacaran trails memorialize the creaturesโ€™ efforts to regain perches from which theyโ€™d been dislodged by waves. โ€œThe first animals to summon the strength to venture forth,โ€ Moor writes, โ€œmay simply have wanted to go back home.โ€ But since a trail implies that someone other than its maker might want to follow it, Moor ultimately decides that the Ediacaran spoors donโ€™t make the cut. Each recorded journey was self-contained โ€” a kind of filmstrip of an animal on the go but not really a trail.

Kate Tuttle’s Boston Globe review: here

Part natural history, part scientific inquiry, but most of all a deeply thoughtful human meditation on how we walk through life, Moorโ€™s book is enchanting. He talks with paleontologists studying the worldโ€™s oldest fossil trails, and biologists pondering the exquisite delicacy of an elephantโ€™s foot, which allows it to detect distant thunder, and thereby lead the way toward water. Even more fascinating, if sometimes troubling, is Moorโ€™s examination of the human relationships to trails, how history and culture influence our understanding of the land, whether we view it as a resource to conquer, a wilderness to fear, or a treasure to protect. โ€œWalking creates trails,โ€ Moor writes. โ€œTrails, in turn, shape landscapes. And, over time, landscapes come to serve as archives of communal knowledge and symbolic meaning.โ€

Joseph Bottum’s Washinton Free Beacon review gives me pause, because I know the “type,” and I’m not likely to want to waste my time for that type and typing:

The problemย is that Moor canโ€™t quite keep up the charm, no matter how hard he tries. Too often, the careful winsomeness cracks like a forced smile on the face of someone whose nature is to scowl, and what shines through at various points in the book is the authorโ€™s overwhelming scorn. His scorn for previous nature writers. His scorn for everyone who does not share exactly his shade of environmentalism. His scorn for casual hikers who havenโ€™t completed the treks that he has. His scorn even for his readers: Robert Moor just doesnโ€™t like you and me very much. He thinks weโ€™re dilettantes, and only real hikersโ€”only people like him, and, in truth, not very many of themโ€”should have a say about what nature is…Mostly though, a sense of wonder might have given the author the humility to forego the sneer that leaves On Trails a book that youโ€™ll only want to like, instead of actually, you know, liking it.

David Ebner’s The Globe and Mail review

Last, but not least, Amazon has a summary of review bites, and reader reviews here.

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