On Trails: An Exploration Audiobook (Free)

From a brilliant new literary voice comes a groundbreaking exploration of how trails help us understand the world—from tiny ant trails to hiking pathways that period continents, from interstate highways to the web.

In 2009 2009, while thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, Robert Moor started to wonder about the paths that lie beneath our ft: How do they form? Why perform some improve over time while others fade? Why is us follow or hit off on our very own? Over the course of another seven years, about On Paths: An Exploration Moor journeyed the globe, exploring trails of most kinds, from your miniscule towards the substantial. He learned the tricks of get good at trail-builders, hunted down long-lost Cherokee paths, and traced the origins of our street networks and the Internet. In each section, Moor interweaves his escapades with results from science, background, philosophy, and nature writing—combining the nomadic joys of Peter Matthiessen using the eclectic knowledge of Lewis Hyde’s The Present.

Throughout, Moor reveals how this single subject—the oft-overlooked path—sheds fresh light on an abundance of age-old queries: How does purchase emerge away of chaos? How do animals first crawl forth through the seas and spread across continents? How has humanity’s romantic relationship with character and technology shaped world all around us? And, ultimately, so how exactly does each folks pick a route through life?

Moor has the essayist’s gift to make new contacts, the adventurer’s love for paths untaken, and the philosopher’s knack for asking big queries. Having a breathtaking arc that spans through the dawn of pet life towards the digital period, On Trails is normally a book that makes us observe the world, our history, our species, and our ways of life anew.

“The best outdoors book from the year” —Sierra Club

“Stunning…A wondrous non-fiction debut” —Departures

“Moor’s publication is charming” —The Boston World

“A wanderer’s fantasy” —The Economist