Mark Mason

Paths to fulfillment

Robert Moor reveals how, from the earliest times, humans and animals have moved in deeply mysterious ways, along ‘lines of desire’

issue 10 September 2016

You could say that this book contradicts itself. Robert Moor’s chosen topic is trails — not just walking, where you go for a bit of a stroll and might turn here or might turn there, but specifically trails, where you can only follow one route. He likes them because ‘they are a rigidly bounded experience. Every morning, the hiker’s options are reduced to two: walk or quit.’ And yet the book itself operates by exploring tangents, lots of subjects related to trails but which aren’t themselves trails.

Not that the contradiction matters; Moor goes down some pretty interesting tangents. While visiting Newfoundland to examine the oldest trails ever discovered — left 565 million years ago by tiny creatures on what was then the seabed, though we don’t know why — he examines the question of what makes us human.

Nature, as you’d expect, is a constant theme.

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