FIVE TAKEAWAYS FROM ROBERT MOOR’S ON TRAILS

On Trails: An Exploration By Robert Moor Simon & Schuster 352 pp; $34

Robert Moor’s On Trails: An Exploration is a fascinating meditation on how and why trails develop, and why we walk for walking’s sake. Here are five of the many things I learned while traveling through its pages:

1 Paths of least resistance, i.e. where people cut corners in places like parks and quads, are called “desire lines.” The Japanese call them kemonomichi (beast trails), the French, chemin de l’âne (donkey paths), the Dutch, Oliphantenpad (you got it), and the Americans and English, “cow paths.” A study once pitted 40 cattle against a computer program and the B.I. (Bovine Intelligence) beat the computer by more than 10 per cent. Meanwhile the Union Pacific’s ideal route through the Rockies was, not surprisingly, the one that the American bison had used.

2 Insects reveal that trails can function as external memory and collective intelligence. “Bugs need trails because they are tiny and small-brained,” Moor writes, “but nevertheless must manage huge, complex tasks.” Unfortunately, someone always takes advantage: “highwaymen” beetles lay in wait near the pheromone trails of ants to steal their cargo.

3 Elephants are known to “garden” their trails, clearing encroaching vegetation and dispersing seeds. ( They also listen to messages from distant herds through their surprisingly delicate feet!) “Don’t forget to clean your Oliphantenpad!” the elephant mom didn’t say.

4 Many transportation routes in the U.S. follow Indian paths that preceded them (which themselves often followed game trails), the result of a long European tradition of coopting native infrastructure. Indian trails were efficient, whereas recreational trails – a modern invention, according to Moor – prize scenic beauty. “It is no mere coincidence, then that the English verb to hike, meaning ‘ to walk for pleasure in open country,’ dates back just 200 years, nor that hiking, used as a gerund, only appeared in the 20th century.”

5 The founder of the Appalachian Trail, Benton McKaye, also envisioned the modern interstate highway system (the “townless highway”) in 1931 with his friend, urbanist Lewis Mumford. In the ‘90s, his Appalachian Trail was “extended” as the International Appalachian Trail into Canada, through Quebec, the Maritimes and Newfoundland. And since over Greenland to Western Europe and down into the Anti-Atlas mountains of North Africa, following the rocks that date from the mountains’ birth in the supercontinent Pangaea. (Some posit that the southern end travels on to Mexico and Costa Rica – even Argentina.)

It is doubtful that anyone will traverse the IAT in one continuous hike. To that I say, “Challenge…rejected.”