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Hiking is one of life’s great joys. Turning off screens and getting out into nature for an extended period of time, perhaps even several days, is rejuvenating. Unfortunately, as someone with two young children and a bad back, I can’t really go Backpack anymore. So I often find myself trying to live vicariously through others who write about their long suffering along the Appalachian Mountains or Patent Cooperation Treaty. This is what I thought I signed up for when I picked it up On the Tracks: Exploration by Robert Moore. But it turns out to be much more than that.
The introduction begins with Moore talking about his decision to hike the Appalachian Trail. The first chapter doesn’t stray too far from the expected topic either. It focuses mainly on Moore’s journey to Western Brook Pond in Newfoundland and generally discusses the concept of wilderness.
His talents as a writer appear from the first moment. Storm pins Moore to ridge:
For the better part of an hour, amid rising waves of eardrum rumble, I had time to reconsider the merits of hiking. Stripped of its romantic trappings, the wilderness ceases to inspire; Only a thin scrim separated the majesty from the horror.
This is perhaps the first hint that what you are looking for is not just a simple travelogue or memoir that uses the trail as a narrative device. Chapter Two reinforces this immediately, launching into a discussion of ant paths and the fine distinction between different English words for lines of motion.
On paths He jumps gleefully from topic to topic: toy trails, fiber-optic wires, Moore’s job as a shepherd. Throughout, Moore moves seamlessly between shifting tones. One moment, he’s waxing poetic about the power of nature, the next, telling a tale about misplacing an entire flock of sheep with a comedic sensibility, then turning philosophical about the damage done by colonialism.
It’s a testament to Moore’s skill that the book not only manages to be compulsively readable, but it never feels disjointed as it oscillates wildly from exploration of the primitive Internet conceived by engineer Vannevar Bush in 1945, to quotations by poet Gary Snyder.
On paths It starts with a simple idea: How was the Appalachian Trail, or any hiking trail for that matter, formed? From there it branches endlessly into thousands of different tributaries, exploring how the very concept of pathways can help us understand the world.
