ON TRAILS: AN EXPLORATION

Robert Moor Simon and Schuster

Q Why did you write this book?

A I originally started out wanting to write a book about the Appalachian Trail, which I had recently spent five months hiking. But I couldn’t stop noticing other kinds of trails: insect trails, deer paths, pilgrimage paths, and so on. Over time I began to realize that paths aren’t static; they’re dynamic, fluid. Each person who walks a path changes it a tiny bit, and so paths evolve to suit (and represent) our desires. Paths of wisdom — religions, philosophies, folklore — work that way too. My big breakthrough came when I was talking to an entomologist about how ant trails continually evolve to be more efficient. The word he used for this process was “optimization.” I asked him if he had a good book I could read about optimization. He said, “Sure, it’s called The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.” That’s when I knew that I had stumbled upon a very deep vein of material. It took me seven years to get anywhere near the bottom of it.

Q What is the one thing you want readers to learn from this book?

A Of course, there are many things I want readers to take away from this book. My goal from the outset was to create a book that was light enough to carry on a hiking trip, but dense with ideas. I used to describe it as literary jerky — energy-rich food for thought. But if I had to choose one lesson trails taught me, it would be how dynamic and interdependent our relationship with our environment is. Trails show us how every animal alters the world in its passage. The Earth is not a stage, or a backdrop; it is a collaborative artwork, in which we are all both sculpting and being sculpted. When you realize this, the question then becomes not whether we should shape the Earth, but how — how elegantly, how wisely, or how selfishly and short-sightedly.