The Art of Manliness - #318： Exploring Life's Trails, Literally and Metaphorically

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well one of my

00:00:18.720 favorite things to do in life is to find and hike a trail out in the wild somewhere my favorite

00:00:23.540 place to hike by far vermont i love how a good trail gently leads you through nature you don't

00:00:27.720 have to think much about where you're going so it gives you time to think about other things and

00:00:31.280 this is great for chewing on deep issues and getting new insights but it also causes you to

00:00:35.580 take the trail for granted for example i sometimes forget that a group of people blazed the trail i'm

00:00:40.760 enjoying and that another group of people continues to maintain it without any fanfare my guest today

00:00:45.600 decided to stop taking trails for granted and explore them in depth both literally and metaphorically

00:00:50.220 after his own hike on the appalachian trail his name is robert moore and he's the author of the

00:00:54.320 book on trails and exploration today on the show robert shares why he decided to hike the entire

00:00:58.840 appalachian trail after he graduated from college and why that experience led him to diving deeper

00:01:03.400 into the meaning of trails we then discuss why following a trail is so existentially satisfying

00:01:07.840 and how trails are embedded in human thought and communication and provide us with a sense of place

00:01:12.240 and orientation in our lives and we end our conversation talking about the idealistic origins

00:01:16.360 of the appalachian trail the movement to extend the appalachian trail to morocco yes morocco and what a

00:01:22.300 perpetual hiker named nimblewell nomad can teach us about the limits of freedom if you're a hiker

00:01:27.500 you're going to love this show if you're not a hiker it's going to inspire you to find a trail this

00:01:31.300 weekend and become one after the show is over check out the show notes at aom.is slash trails

00:01:36.200 robert moore welcome to the show thank you so much for having me so you wrote a book on trails and

00:01:45.640 exploration and it's all about trails and some people might hear that and think well that's kind of

00:01:51.180 boring but you found out that there's a lot to trails and trail making and it was a fascinating

00:01:57.040 read let's talk about the impetus behind this book it was your exploration of trails was started by your

00:02:03.960 own hike of the appalachian trail when did you hike the appalachian trail and why did you decide you

00:02:09.700 want to do the through hike where you'd go all the way from georgia to maine yeah so i hiked the

00:02:14.480 appalachian trail in 2009 when i was graduated from undergrad and i i had some time before i knew i was

00:02:21.400 going to graduate school so i had a nice little break there in my life and if you talk to through

00:02:27.560 hikers which is what people who hiked the whole appalachian trail are called they'll often tell you

00:02:32.340 that that they were at a sort of a gap in their life they were trying to find the next step forward

00:02:39.600 maybe they just got divorced or they just got fired or a lot of people just come out of the military

00:02:44.840 a lot of people have just retired and that's where i was in my life i didn't know exactly where i was

00:02:49.900 going next i knew i was going to graduate school and so i had a good deadline i had to be back by

00:02:55.000 september but i had nothing to do for those five months and it was something i dreamed of doing since

00:02:59.680 i was a kid i'd grown up going to summer camp in maine and seeing these through hikers and wanting

00:03:06.400 to emulate them and so i i saw my chance and uh i took it yeah so you were a hiker before you did

00:03:14.000 the the appalachian trail i was yeah i was i'd done quite a bit of hiking backpacking up to that

00:03:20.220 point but never longer than maybe a couple of weeks you know i'd certainly never gone longer than

00:03:26.020 a month and so the idea of hiking for five months was a bit daunting but once you start doing it you

00:03:32.400 realize it's just the same as any other hike you just have to keep going you know that's the trick

00:03:36.960 is to keep going right what was it about your experience on the appalachian trail that led you to

00:03:44.220 want to explore trails from a macro view yeah it's funny you say that you know the thing about it being

00:03:52.040 boring because that's something that when i was writing this book i ran into a lot people would say

00:03:57.300 what do you you know what's your book about and i would say i'm writing a book about trails and

00:04:00.780 it just it'd be kind of a blank stare you know because no one has has written a book about trails

00:04:06.760 before and the idea that they're not something we think about very much as i write in the book you

00:04:11.880 know we kind of tend to overlook them right if a trail is doing what it's supposed to do you don't

00:04:17.220 look at it at all it just leads you to where you need to go invisibly and you're looking up and

00:04:21.900 you're looking out at the at the landscape but the year that i hiked the appalachian trail was a very

00:04:27.400 rainy year uh in the the new york times called it the summer that wasn't because it just stayed cold

00:04:33.680 and rainy the whole summer and so i had a lot of time just to stare at my boots and stare at the

00:04:39.460 trail and think about it and you know it was by myself and as you do you start to expand upon your

00:04:45.760 own ideas and i and i was noticing that the trail first of all was not a static thing it wasn't what i

00:04:53.280 thought it was you you think of it almost as a paved path but it isn't because as anyone who hikes a

00:04:59.980 hiking trail knows when people don't like the way the trail goes they take a shortcut right if if

00:05:05.960 there's a big long switchback going down a mountain then people will just make a shortcut go where they

00:05:14.320 want to go and that becomes the new trail and so there's a kind of liquid quality to trails that i found

00:05:20.780 really fascinating and then as i was hiking along farther i started to realize that we weren't alone

00:05:26.900 on this trail in fact animals were following the trail as well if you paid close attention you'd start

00:05:31.600 to notice little hoof prints and little footprints on the trail deer bear and other animals and so

00:05:39.340 that notion it started to crack there's cracks started to form in what my understanding of what a

00:05:45.920 trail was and it started to widen and then i started noticing ant trails and then i started

00:05:50.820 thinking about metaphorical trails why that phrase the trail or the path is so prevalent across languages

00:05:57.780 across religions across cultures what is this very fundamental thing that we're all following yeah

00:06:05.040 no let's follow that idea of paths and trails being a metaphor that we use in language because one of the

00:06:11.540 arguments and you you make in the book is that trail making is one of the animal world's first forms of

00:06:17.020 communication yeah i think that's that's true i mean it's really definitely one of the simplest forms of

00:06:23.180 communication and it's a little bit complicated you know because i i went to find the oldest trails on

00:06:28.920 earth which are in newfoundland and these fossilized trails something called ediacra biota which were

00:06:35.300 565 million years ago and yet when i started to think about what those were they're not really

00:06:43.740 trails because they they're they're traces you know they were left behind in the movement of these

00:06:51.020 animals these very very early animals but unless someone else is picking them up and following them

00:06:56.740 then it's not really a trail that was where my definition of a trail came in is is that it's in that act

00:07:03.560 of following something someone else has left behind and then you leaving a trace in your passage that

00:07:09.640 someone else can follow and and when you do that you set up a sort of evolutionary uh sequence that

00:07:15.780 becomes it begins to streamline over time but if you look at it very simply that's what a trail is an

00:07:21.620 animal has gone somewhere and left this very simple message on the ground saying hey there's something

00:07:27.780 worth going to here you know if you stumble upon a game trail in the forest

00:07:32.980 that's a pretty good indication that there's something there because enough animals have gone

00:07:38.260 there and and decided that this trail is worth following for it to remain for it to perpetuate

00:07:43.920 right so uh trails are they they externalize it's a way to externalize information in the outside it is

00:07:50.600 yeah it's it's a way to externalize uh information it's almost an external form of memory you can almost

00:07:55.940 look at it as an external memory when when you look at insects for example that's

00:08:00.040 kind of how they're using trails if you look at fire ants for example they'll they'll go out from

00:08:05.740 their nests they'll find food they'll come back and they leave a message and that that message is

00:08:10.300 in pheromones that they're of course invisible but they can detect them very clearly and so if they

00:08:15.500 find a big store of food they're going to go and leave a very strong trail right they're they're going

00:08:23.400 to they get excited they leave a lot of pheromones that then sends a signal to the other ants

00:08:28.500 that there's a lot of food there they go find the food they leave a very strong trail that that signal

00:08:33.300 keeps amplifying until the food is gone and then they don't leave a strong trail this the trail

00:08:38.540 begins to diminish to evaporate the signal lessens and somewhere else there's a stronger signal so the

00:08:45.120 ants very quickly stop following that trail and start following a new trail which allows them to

00:08:50.040 create these ever updating networks of of information that are that are incredibly intelligent and

00:08:56.300 incredibly efficient yeah i thought it was interesting when you were describing the ant trail

00:09:00.220 researchers which is surprising you know there's people who dedicate their lives to researching how

00:09:05.060 ants make trails but it's really fascinating how you said that in the beginning the trails would be

00:09:09.700 very sporadic but over time they got more and more refined and more and more straight it was sort of

00:09:16.220 this up you know bottom up approach to uh trail making yeah it's it's a streamlining process you know

00:09:23.080 and i think this is familiar to anyone who who does any sort of creative process you know that

00:09:28.960 your first draft is not very good and and that's true of ants as well when they go off and they

00:09:33.880 find a piece of food finding a way back to the nest is is difficult you know the the landscape is a chaotic

00:09:40.980 place this is a theme that runs throughout the book is that trails are a way of managing the chaos of

00:09:47.020 landscape and so they're trying to find their way home and they're making all sorts of errors and

00:09:51.360 they're leaving this really wiggly really strange trail on their way back one of the anecdotes that

00:09:57.000 i recount is is this guy richard fineman the famous physicist he did a little experiment on his own on

00:10:03.460 his bathtub where he set a lump of sugar and he watched the first ant go off and find the lump of

00:10:09.000 sugar and make its way back to the nest and it was making all sorts of mistakes but the second ant

00:10:13.620 came found the same sugar and it was following the first ants trail but as it was going along it was

00:10:18.820 making little adjustments you know it was shaving off the inside of the curves and it was cutting off

00:10:24.540 unnecessary bends and the trail got a little bit straighter and then the third ant comes and the

00:10:29.360 fourth ant and over time the trail gets straighter and straighter and straighter because of course

00:10:34.360 they're trying to optimize to get home while using as little energy as possible you know minimizing

00:10:40.940 their caloric expenditure and that's where this elegance comes from it's a really simple system but

00:10:47.820 it's really effective and how do more complex animals make trails so the ants leave pheromones

00:10:53.280 behind say something like buffalo or hogs or something like that how do they go about making trails is it

00:11:00.120 is it the same sort of bottom up are they off are they a little more deliberate about it

00:11:04.540 certainly yeah there well it's hard to you know that's that's something i i asked a lot of animal

00:11:09.620 researchers is if animals know what a trail means you know if there's some sort of semiotic content to

00:11:18.580 a trail for an animal meaning it when we walk through the woods and we see a trail you look at it and you

00:11:23.620 say that's a trail that goes somewhere and i and it's unclear whether most most mammals look at a trail

00:11:31.420 and say that's a trail or whether they just think something along the lines of there's less vegetation

00:11:36.240 there so it's easier to walk but when it comes to the larger and smarter mammals especially elephants

00:11:43.320 it's pretty clear that it is a a deliberative process both the making of the trails and the

00:11:49.760 following of them when they elephants have incredibly powerful memories and incredible sense organs so

00:11:55.780 when they go somewhere they they tend to know where they're going and they pass down their trails from

00:12:01.560 generation to generation so once they're disrupted i've spoken with researchers of uh who study

00:12:08.140 forest uh forest elephants and they told me that the the if you start breaking up the forest elephants

00:12:14.740 trails through logging for example you completely disrupt their communal memory you really screw up their

00:12:21.700 ability to find forage to find water to find mates it's that they rely upon those trails and so you know he

00:12:29.940 compared it to imagine if you went into a major city like dresden that's been totally bombed you know

00:12:35.480 and you grew up there and you knew you're you knew how to find your way to school but suddenly all the

00:12:40.100 blocks have been blown apart and everything's in chaos you couldn't find your way to school anymore it'd

00:12:45.280 be much more difficult so i think that among larger mammals it's it is a deliberative process but

00:12:51.940 there's still a there's still something very simple about it which they they keep in common with the

00:12:57.940 smaller insects and smaller mammals so let's talk about humans when did humans start making trails

00:13:04.800 or do we have evidence of when humans started making trails and what do they base their those

00:13:09.160 initial trails on yeah we don't we don't have any good archaeological evidence for when the earliest

00:13:15.180 human trails are and part of that i found out while i was researching this book is because archaeologists

00:13:20.700 until very recently did not study trails they studied roads and they studied other things that were made

00:13:27.000 with your hands and there's a kind of bias for things that are made with your hands rather than things

00:13:32.260 that are made with your feet um the many of them would not consider trails to be an archaeological

00:13:38.000 artifact whereas if you made paving stones then that was an artifact but the the the basic way that

00:13:47.760 trails are made i mean you know it's the same as animals but what becomes interesting with humans

00:13:53.100 is that very early we begin weaving our trails together with our understanding of the world and so

00:14:02.720 for example with folklore you'll find that folk tales ancient folk tales you know indigenous folk tales from

00:14:09.220 from many places are woven together with the trails the stories will actually follow ancient pathways and

00:14:16.360 describe things that took place along the way and so the story is pegged to certain places in the

00:14:23.940 landscape it's it's not just an abstract idea like a girl walked through a forest and you know there was a

00:14:30.380 big wolf following her it's a girl walked through this forest and stopped at this watering hole and picked

00:14:36.160 this plant and all of those things tend to follow a trail because of course that's where you would that's

00:14:43.420 that's where the people would be walking and telling these stories and that's what the the the way that

00:14:48.320 their landscape would be stitched together as it were and so i spent a lot of time talking to people

00:14:54.780 a lot of native american communities about their trail traditions and in fact i found a man

00:15:02.060 in north carolina who's trying to map all of the ancient cherokee trails that existed there and one of the

00:15:09.600 things he found is that it's woven together with their culture in a really kind of an inextricable

00:15:14.280 way yeah that thought was interesting because i live in oklahoma so you know the western cherokees

00:15:19.000 are here right this five civil life tribe that's right right here we're pretty much in um tulsa like

00:15:24.020 that's like we're like in the heart of it but i thought the interesting point you made was that the

00:15:27.640 the cherokee who still live in north carolina when they tell these stories they talk about specific

00:15:31.960 mountains right the western cherokees in oklahoma they have those stories too but they just talk about

00:15:36.720 kind of a general mountain or a general river yeah that's right the the stories have been have

00:15:41.720 been cut off from the place and and one of the things that that someone told me who who studies

00:15:47.500 these she said that you know you can hear this story there's one story in particular that she was

00:15:52.720 talking about which was about a race between some turtles and she said you can hear that story in

00:15:58.620 oklahoma and it's still a powerful story it still conveys a lot of information and wisdom but when you

00:16:05.000 tell that story in north carolina and in fact you stand on the mountain that the story is describing

00:16:10.460 you can look out across the landscape and the tops of the mountains the green tops of the mountains

00:16:16.220 look like turtle shells and actually you can see the story taking place in the landscape and she said

00:16:22.240 it just has so much more power there yeah and so i mean yeah it's trails then in a way situate us not

00:16:29.400 only physically right but also existentially like it gives us a sense of meaning in our in our life

00:16:35.980 yeah i think that's right i think i think they they give us a sense of of meaning and coherence you

00:16:42.580 know you're the world is a confusing place and if we didn't have any trails either physical or

00:16:49.240 metaphorical we would be just totally lost right i thought it was interesting how you talk about how

00:16:56.180 we with the information age removing less from like a a trail-based culture because like if you

00:17:03.020 look back if you go back what i thought was interesting you go back to the human all of like 0.98

00:17:06.140 in america a lot of the trails and roads we have today they basically follow uh buffalo herding

00:17:13.040 migrations that native americans followed to hunt and then when white people came here from europe 0.58

00:17:18.020 the white people began to follow those trails that the native americans had blazed by by following

00:17:23.100 these herds it was all this very up bottom up organic approach and even the roads we have today

00:17:28.400 often follow these trails that began maybe millions of years ago but today we we take a much more top

00:17:37.380 down approach to our road making or trail making how how do you think that has detached us from

00:17:44.240 our sense of place by going from a top-down approach yeah that's that's a big question i mean that

00:17:51.520 that that that that organic approach that you describe is you know has a lot to speak for it

00:17:57.820 because it it it creates trails that are very um that are very elegant and very situated in the

00:18:06.020 landscape and then when you build a culture around that it creates a culture that's also situated in

00:18:11.580 the landscape and so we've as as everyone knows we you know we've been pulling away from that since

00:18:18.140 at least since the era of industrialism and if not since some people would say since the era of the

00:18:23.340 invention of of agriculture we've been changing our approach to land and and so one of the reasons why

00:18:31.180 we make this shift in our trails why we for example build highways is because a trail evolves to suit the

00:18:39.780 needs of the people who follow it so if you're you know if you don't need uh on a foot trail you don't

00:18:46.380 need a whole lot a whole lot of infrastructure you don't need a whole lot of planning they can evolve

00:18:50.400 organically and by evolving organically they they become very elegant and very beautiful

00:18:54.860 and they they uh disappear right when you stop using them they just fade back into the landscape

00:19:00.300 but you can't drive a semi-truck along a trail you need infrastructure you need planning and so you end up

00:19:07.260 creating these new forms of of trail making uh that have a totally different character and and one of the

00:19:14.540 effects of that one of the the reasons why we do it is to go faster right let's go faster to carry more

00:19:20.940 freight and in doing that we are uh moving more and more quickly through the landscape we're not engaging

00:19:28.240 with it in the same way anyone who's ever taken a road trip and then gone for a hike you you know you

00:19:35.340 get out of your car and you go for a hike and you can feel your brain transform you can feel the the mode

00:19:41.360 that you're in shift because this landscape's not sliding past you at high speed anymore you're

00:19:46.640 actually in it in and it's all around you and you're having to navigate it in a much different

00:19:52.020 much more intense way and of course you can imagine how much more profound that would be if you had

00:19:57.700 been walking across that same landscape for weeks or years or generations um so i think we we

00:20:06.520 everybody knows we're more cut off from the natural world than we used to be that's that's a very

00:20:14.180 common um trope i think in in nature writing and but i think that the one of the ways that that's

00:20:20.960 happening that we don't think about very often is the way that we move through the world whether

00:20:26.040 we're walking on trails or we're walking driving on highways or riding on a shinkansen bullet train through

00:20:32.600 japan yeah that when you were talking about the highways it made me think if you've seen cars

00:20:37.120 right the disney pixar movie i have not no oh there's this like scene that's like it gets you

00:20:42.340 in the fields every time you watch it so like there's like this little town called radiator springs

00:20:46.460 in the middle of the desert and route 66 like ran through it and like route 66 if you've been on

00:20:51.240 route 66 it's very curvy and it goes through the landscape and it's it's it's a nice drive but then i-40

00:20:57.140 is built and it bypasses radiator springs and the no one comes to visit radiator springs anymore

00:21:01.700 it's all sad it reminds me of that that's true yeah i was just out on route 66 actually in new

00:21:07.080 mexico and you do see that that whole towns will dry up or they'll migrate to follow those yeah those

00:21:14.000 gigantic trails yeah well let's talk about like walking on a trail i love trail hiking because

00:21:21.440 it's just so soothing right like when i get on the trail it doesn't matter what trail it is

00:21:27.740 i just feel great uh what's going on there is it because i'm in nature or is there something more

00:21:33.180 going on because i'm on a trail yeah there's a lot going on there the the the first thing is that

00:21:39.640 walking on a trail is i think it is kind of existentially soothing and the best way to

00:21:45.580 understand that is to go off the trail every once in a while right to go on a hike for two or three days

00:21:51.420 where you don't walk on a trail and that's depending on the landscape it can be easier it can be very

00:21:56.620 difficult out west it's a lot easier in the desert you can do it i've you know i've been on hikes in

00:22:01.300 new mexico and wyoming and and montana that that are okay uh off trail but if you try to do it in

00:22:08.720 the east where there's a lot more vegetation it it gets tough really quick and actually that's true

00:22:13.700 here where i live as well i live in the pacific northwest and if you have a really heavily forested

00:22:19.860 area uh man you as soon as you go off trail you're you're wishing for that trail again i went

00:22:26.180 for a hike in newfoundland that i described in the book uh where i was fighting my way through

00:22:32.260 these these stunted trees for hours and hours on end and when i finally found my way back to the trail

00:22:38.640 after this three-day hike that just took everything i had uh i was you know i wanted to weep for joy

00:22:46.580 because you start following the trail and all that weight of not just having to fight your way

00:22:52.480 through the vegetation but worrying am i lost am i am i going to die out here you know there's this

00:22:58.720 real dread and this fear that follows you when you go off trail because you don't have that assurance

00:23:03.980 all of a sudden and so the trail allows you it just lifts that weight from you and it allows you to go

00:23:09.460 into a more i think just a more peaceful meditative mode of walking than this very heightened fight

00:23:17.140 your flight awareness that you have when you're off trail yeah and i love the other thing i love

00:23:21.360 about trail make or the following in trails like the decision's already been made for me right like

00:23:26.300 i don't have to make the decision of where i'm going yeah i just follow the trail and i i think in

00:23:30.500 our culture that really puts a premium on choice like man choice is exhausting and like sometimes i

00:23:36.260 just want to be told what to do and where to go yeah this is a dichotomy that would really serve

00:23:41.120 everyone well to think a lot about because you're right we grow up in as kids in america you grow up

00:23:47.260 with this this this belief that the pathfinder and the trailblazer is heroic and everyone else are just

00:23:54.320 kind of sheep you know they're just lemmings and and there's a real shame attached to that and so

00:23:59.840 whatever field you're in for example in the field of writing i always put this enormous premium on myself

00:24:06.220 as a college student you know as a high school student to try and do everything completely

00:24:10.400 originally i i would not read the old classics because i thought that's already been done you

00:24:15.820 know i need to be a trailblazer and that's actually too much pressure to put on yourself unless you're

00:24:22.200 someone who is a complete genius you know just a a sweet generous talent um comes along once in a

00:24:29.700 generation it's it's overwhelming it's like fighting your way through this tangled wilderness and in fact

00:24:35.940 once you find a trail what you find is by following it you know by following the tradition by following

00:24:42.160 the wisdom of people who've come before you you're not just following you're also creating right because

00:24:48.560 every person who follows a trail changes that trail a little bit and so that can be a very very

00:24:54.540 productive way of doing things but then also you have to keep in mind that some trails become ruts

00:25:00.520 right sometimes the trail degrades because too many people have followed it and it's not useful

00:25:05.980 anymore and so you you do have to break off into the into the weeds of life every once in a while

00:25:11.720 and try and blaze something new right yeah i love that idea of not disparaging if you're just following

00:25:17.340 a trail like i remember we go to vermont my family goes to vermont every summer the appalachian trail

00:25:21.980 goes through that actually we'll talk about that how the long trail in vermont was sort of the

00:25:26.020 impetus of the appalachian trail um but i remember think when i was on a trail um hiking thinking boy

00:25:33.080 i'm really grateful for the people who come and maintain this trail like if it weren't for these

00:25:37.100 folks like yeah i wouldn't be able to enjoy this thing and i'm glad they're there and they're sort of

00:25:42.200 the unsung heroes of of trails yeah i'm really glad that you had that realization because most people

00:25:48.960 don't most people don't even think about trail makers at all and that's something that on the

00:25:54.400 appalachian trail there's a little festival in the middle of it called trail days for hikers they

00:25:59.740 all get together in this town in virginia and they you know have a big bonfire and party and get to

00:26:05.340 meet one another right because you're all strung out along the trail and you're this community but

00:26:09.360 you never really meet each other and one of the things they do is just after that you get together

00:26:14.560 and all the hikers will go volunteer with this incredible old guy named bob peoples and they'll go do a

00:26:21.300 weekend of trail building and it's your way of kind of paying back the good karma that's been

00:26:25.980 paid to you by all these trail makers and one of the things that you realize is that most through

00:26:32.160 hikers don't think haven't even thought about the fact that someone made this and if they have 0.97

00:26:37.220 the only thing they've been focusing on is wow the guy who made this did a really crappy job you know

00:26:42.280 the person who did this didn't build a good bridge for me or didn't uh you know just took me out of

00:26:46.920 my way you start to get this very begrudging weird mindset when you're a through hiker because

00:26:53.240 you're trying to cover so many miles each day that you don't want to screw around you don't want to

00:26:59.280 have to go in the wrong direction so oftentimes you'll find the trail journals which are these

00:27:03.360 journals that people leave in uh the the shelters along the way and they're sort of communal journals

00:27:08.920 people will write in they'll just complain about the quality of the trail but when you get out there

00:27:13.560 and you start building it yourself and you realize that every inch of this trail that stretches from

00:27:19.280 georgia to maine has been built with someone's hands not with power tools most of the time with

00:27:24.280 with hand tools by volunteers you really realize what a what a beautiful incredible thing that is that

00:27:31.440 that people have put all that time and energy into building this thing for for nothing for no profit

00:27:36.540 uh just for you know just for the sake of it these trail makers like what did you discover like

00:27:42.360 what makes for a good trail and for someone who has walked the appalachian trail and lots of trails

00:27:47.180 what do you think makes for a good trail it's a very complicated process building a good trail

00:27:52.620 because you have to it's a kind of uh it's almost like predicting the future you need to guess where

00:27:59.780 people are going to want to walk right because trails are an expression of desire so if you build a bad

00:28:06.240 trail people are going to go off trail they're going to go wherever they want and one of the really

00:28:10.640 funny things is to see how trail makers fight with hikers right one of the guys i talked to

00:28:18.280 works at the atc told me you know this whole hiker management thing would be a whole lot easier

00:28:23.640 without the hikers and what he means by hiker management is that hikers don't always follow the

00:28:28.880 trail as we've said so sometimes to stop them they'll do things like install jagged rocks on the side

00:28:35.540 of the trail they call those gargoyles or they'll dump a big load of of branches or sometimes one guy

00:28:41.640 i read said he would dump a bunch of poison oak leaves on a side trail that people were trying

00:28:47.480 to take to get them to stop going you know you want the people to go where you want them to go

00:28:52.700 and the reason why is that a hiking trail doesn't just have to be efficient doesn't doesn't just have

00:29:01.380 to get you from point a to point b and in this way it's a hiking trail is totally different from

00:29:05.600 any trail that exists on earth because a hiking trails its impetus is to be sustainable it's to

00:29:13.780 shed water efficiently it's to not destroy a whole lot of sensitive vegetation so they take on these

00:29:20.300 really screwy shapes and when we're walking a trail you can feel that that's why we make those

00:29:25.340 shortcuts is because you there's a very deep animal part of you that says this isn't right this isn't the

00:29:30.540 most elegant way to get up or down this mountain i want to go where i want to go and so the the task

00:29:37.940 of a trail builder and this is something else i think is a really powerful metaphor for anyone who

00:29:43.800 works in in you know a field where you have to deal with people but especially people who work in the

00:29:48.740 world of sustainability the job of a trail builder is to get the hiker to go where the hiker should go

00:29:55.600 based on everyone's communal best interest rather than where the hiker naturally wants to go based

00:30:01.400 on their own self-interest and that's a really tricky task the best the best hike the best trail

00:30:07.780 builders that i've met the real master trail builders do it in such a way that they make the

00:30:14.060 hiker want to stay on the trail because the trail is so beautiful that they don't want to get off the

00:30:19.220 trail you know they're enjoying it so much so for example if there's a waterfall that you can hear

00:30:24.860 you have to make the trail go to that waterfall because if you don't people are just going to go

00:30:29.140 there anyway the best trail builders know that and they they use your desire as a hiker rather than

00:30:36.940 trying to thwart your desire right so again the idea of trail trail making as communication is being

00:30:42.960 displayed right here yeah it's it's a kind of communication it's a kind of it's almost a kind of

00:30:47.460 narrative i mean it's it's it's a little bit profound if you think about it as a trail builder

00:30:53.320 what you're doing is you're building an experience for another person yeah and i thought was also

00:30:59.580 interesting about the book is that this idea of like hiking right it's a new idea like people if you

00:31:06.660 think about it yeah people in the 1600s probably didn't like would even imagine like i'm gonna hike

00:31:14.160 from georgia to maine like that wasn't like or i'm just gonna go out into the wilderness to be out

00:31:18.460 in the wilderness that wasn't their thing when did like being out in the wilderness and going hiking as

00:31:23.180 a as an as a pleasurable activity something you would do just to pass the time when did that become a

00:31:27.960 thing yeah this this is this is something that anyone who's gone hiking in another country

00:31:33.800 probably realized because not only is hiking a very modern thing it's a very western thing it's a very

00:31:39.760 european and north american thing you know when i i went on a hike in tanzania once and the maasai

00:31:46.440 tribesmen that i met told me that they refer to hikers or as westerners you know who most of them

00:31:52.240 they see are hiking as people with heavy luggage looking for problems you know because they would

00:31:58.420 see these people walking along with these giant bags on their back and there would be a big mountain

00:32:03.580 and there'd be a trail going around to the left and trail going around it to the right and they would

00:32:07.720 walk straight up the mountain and and that was just kind of hilarious right why what is wrong with

00:32:12.560 these people that they take the path of most resistance all the time so so it is kind of absurd

00:32:18.360 i mean before the the beginning of the romantic era when when we began to appreciate mountains

00:32:24.820 as these beautiful things as these sublime things before that they were ugly people referred to them as

00:32:30.400 pustules you know they were and they were dangerous and and the reason for that is largely because

00:32:35.140 they had no value they had no economic value you couldn't grow crops there you know it was dangerous

00:32:41.320 unless there were minerals to be gotten why would you go there you know and also many people believed

00:32:47.780 and many cultures believed that it was the abode of spirits right that was where uh the storm god lived

00:32:53.940 so if you go there you're you're tempting fate and so that changes around the time when you start

00:33:00.280 seeing this shift in culture that we were talking about before when you with the rise of industrialism

00:33:05.540 and the rise of urbanism suddenly people need to get out of cities they need to get out of their life

00:33:11.680 as it is and get into something that feels to them a little bit wilder a little bit more natural

00:33:17.660 and you start seeing this rise in poetry and painting in in various art forms describing these wild

00:33:25.100 mountains and these forests as beautiful and with that comes the beginning of hiking and hiking has

00:33:31.980 gone through a number of phases throughout the years you know it was not always what it is currently

00:33:37.160 at one point hiking meant you'd go off into the woods and you'd cut down a bunch of trees and build

00:33:42.300 yourself a little shelter for the night you know that that was the style of hiking was very high

00:33:46.480 impact but in some ways it was more you might say more natural than sleeping in a you know in a nylon tent

00:33:52.400 and so the the current mode that we have of hiking is really funny because we think of it as going

00:33:58.900 back to nature when in fact it's this very modern very unnatural thing to do which is not to say it's

00:34:06.320 not worth doing i still love it but you know you sort of have to understand what it is right so the

00:34:11.140 wilderness would not be possible without civilization like it could not exist like you need one it does

00:34:16.420 not exist i mean yeah it's it's a it's not the concept doesn't make sense without without a fence

00:34:22.960 unless you have a farm and a fence around it then what's outside is not wilderness it's just the world

00:34:29.060 you know there there's no concept of it well let's talk about the appalachian trail because this is the

00:34:34.220 whole thing that kicked off your exploration and what's funny is for some reason i assumed that the

00:34:38.860 appalachian trail had been around for hundreds of years that it was some sort of native american route that

00:34:44.340 you know went from georgia to maine and then white people used it for transportation but that's not

00:34:49.640 the case actually didn't start until the 20th century so who was the who had the idea of create

00:34:55.940 this long continental through trail from georgia to maine yeah yeah i mean you're right in that there

00:35:02.220 were trade routes up running up and down the atlantic coast but they would never have gone the way the

00:35:07.080 appalachian trail does as we said because it goes over all these mountaintops it would be much too slow

00:35:11.380 so the first person to make that realization is a guy named benton mckay and the story he tells

00:35:18.040 is that he was in the around 1900 maybe 1902 he was sitting on top of a tree on stratton mountain in

00:35:26.240 vermont and he was looking out over the appalachian mountains going south and he suddenly had this

00:35:32.460 epiphany where he realized that actually the same mountain chain runs all the way to georgia

00:35:36.500 and he thought you know how incredible would it be to have a trail connecting a hiking trail

00:35:42.280 connecting all of these mountains and this was during an era of kind of feverish uh trail building

00:35:47.960 and and he had been on that very hike you know following logging roads following hiking trails kind

00:35:53.880 of stitching together the existing trails that's what he realized that was his real genius was that

00:35:58.940 you wouldn't have to build 2 000 miles of trails you just had to connect the ones that were already

00:36:04.440 there and give it a name and give it a story and give it a mythology and that would be enough

00:36:10.060 to build this thing but in the meantime you know he didn't he that was in his 20s took him another

00:36:16.240 20 years to even get the proposal together he went off and did other things and in the meantime one of

00:36:22.140 the things that springs up as you mentioned earlier is the long trail which runs the length of vermont

00:36:28.260 and that was the first real through through trail you know it's it's it's not nearly the length of the

00:36:34.900 appalachian trail but it starts getting people in the mindset of walking these long distances because

00:36:41.000 previously what you would do is you go to uh these for example you go to these grand mountain hotels in

00:36:46.960 the late 1800s you'd stay in the hotel in in a valley in the in the cat skills or the adirondacks and

00:36:53.120 you go on hikes along the trail network but you wouldn't hike for days and weeks on end in one

00:36:59.340 direction that was kind of an odd idea and in fact it's not really even possible before the invention

00:37:05.160 of the automobile the automobile and the appalachian trail are are intertwined in a really funny way

00:37:11.400 because the the automobile allows you to get out to the mountains and allows you to hitchhike back

00:37:16.860 but it also makes urban spaces so chaotic and so polluted that more people want to get out into

00:37:24.040 the mountains so the history of backpacking you can't tell without telling the history of cars as

00:37:28.960 well but finally benton mckay comes back to this idea the appalachian trail that's been growing in

00:37:34.640 his mind all this time and by the time he comes back to it he's spent a long time in the world of

00:37:40.820 landscape architecture he called it geotechnics you know planning on a large scale and he had all

00:37:48.160 these grand dreams that had grown up around the appalachian trail he wanted it to be a kind of

00:37:52.980 socialist communal space where people would escape from the urban centers of the united states that

00:37:59.680 which ran up and down the atlantic coast predominantly at that time get out of there go to the woods go work

00:38:05.940 on communal farms go hiking he wanted to have sanitariums massive sanitariums for people suffering

00:38:12.060 from depression and various mental illnesses and it was going to be this this beautiful commune in the

00:38:19.200 mountains and so he proposed it to people and what resonated with people was the idea of the hiking

00:38:24.680 trail the rest of the stuff didn't really click and so over time the trail idea got more and more

00:38:31.220 support and everything else kind of fell away again got streamlined away and what was left with

00:38:36.660 was what he had originally which is a trail going from georgia to maine yeah i thought it was interesting

00:38:42.460 like he uh kind of this was all happening this cultural background that was happening in america

00:38:46.920 at that time sort of this revolt against modernity yeah right that industrialization is bad this is like

00:38:52.700 when boy scouts started getting going the ymca the strenuous life teddy roosevelt's strenuous life

00:38:59.180 i think even makai said something about like creating new barbarians or something like that

00:39:04.320 that was like a thing he wanted to do with the appalachian trail that's right yeah he there was

00:39:08.700 a feeling that he he called people who lived in cities civilizees and and he wanted to have a revolt

00:39:15.020 against the civilizees he felt people were becoming over civilized and you know since this is the the art

00:39:20.920 of manliness podcast it's worth talking about the fact that it was actually quite a a gendered understanding

00:39:26.740 of uh what the problem was they felt that boys were becoming weak you know they were living in cities

00:39:32.860 and they were getting too pampered and their hands were getting soft and they were getting sick too

00:39:37.700 much and they wanted to toughen them up and so what you see are these places springing up tons and tons

00:39:43.940 of summer camps devoted to the strenuous life you know and devoted to swimming in cold water and hiking

00:39:50.060 big mountains and you know all of these things to toughen these kids up and to get them out of this

00:39:56.020 urban environment that was seen as corrupting and that's actually the summer camp that i went to

00:40:01.880 was a place that was founded in 1902 it's a little camp called pine island and it really hasn't changed

00:40:07.340 much since then it was you know they still use kerosene lanterns there's no there's no electricity

00:40:12.220 there's no running water you're still you know bathed in the lake and so i i had a weird kind of

00:40:18.640 instinctual understanding of this because i it was almost like i went in a time machine every summer

00:40:23.340 and that's really where the appalachian trail springs out of that sense of old timely old

00:40:30.560 timey uh masculinity tied in with wilderness that those two things needed one another in a certain

00:40:38.900 way right right but that that that connection couldn't exist with again without civilization

00:40:43.880 that's the irony and yeah people wouldn't be going out there right they wouldn't have the reason to go

00:40:49.900 out there unless civilization had become what it had become yeah right okay so uh what i thought was

00:40:57.860 really interesting and kind of preposterous is this idea that people are trying to do with the

00:41:02.380 international appalachian trail so this is the idea that the appalachian trail currently goes from

00:41:08.380 georgia to maine there was a movement saying well part of the appalachian mountains goes to canada

00:41:13.640 okay that makes sense but now there's like folks who are like well it goes all the way to morocco actually

00:41:19.280 yeah so he tells us about this movement and do you think it's going to be ultimately successful

00:41:24.080 yeah so that it starts with a guy named dick anderson uh who's a real character he lives up in

00:41:30.440 maine and and the story he told me was that he was driving along the highway one day and he said

00:41:35.420 you know he was driving up i-95 i think and he's heading towards the canadian border and he realizes

00:41:41.780 that the appalachians of course don't stop at the border even though the road stops the mountains

00:41:47.120 keep going and and he's a he's a guy who who'd worked in a variety of fields you know land

00:41:53.260 management for a long time so he he knew his geology he knew that the appalachians kept going

00:41:57.760 up through quebec and actually up to the northern tip of newfoundland he thought why doesn't the

00:42:02.980 appalachian trail keep going you know who cares about the border so he started a project to continue

00:42:08.580 the appalachian trail up to newfoundland it then becomes called the international appalachian trail

00:42:14.660 because there's a bit of a there's a bit of a rivalry or a bit of an enmity between the

00:42:23.860 canadian faction and the american faction and you know the people who are invested their life's work

00:42:29.100 in the appalachian trail want it to end in maine they don't want it to keep going forever but this

00:42:35.200 this new trail started getting built people in in quebec and new brunswick and newfoundland they all

00:42:41.340 were on board with it and so they extend the trail up to the northern tip of newfoundland but as

00:42:45.780 they're doing this dick anderson's friends are coming to him and saying well you know if you 0.59

00:42:50.400 really want to be strict about it the appalachian geology continues throughout europe because when 0.70

00:42:57.600 there was a pangea when there's a megacontinent that was one mountain range right it was actually

00:43:02.400 it kind of split if you imagine a piece of paper that's been folded and then it's been

00:43:06.900 torn in half that's what happened to uh north america europe and north africa when the megacontinence

00:43:14.460 split apart that the appalachian trail was the seam along which we split apart so the other half of

00:43:20.620 the appalachian trail as it were is across the atlantic and so he started thinking about that and he said

00:43:27.280 well yeah why not why not can build it's the international appalachian trail already we've already

00:43:32.140 gone to canada why not go to greenland and then down through western europe to north africa so we

00:43:38.280 started reaching out to other trail clubs there and just like benton mckay he realized you wouldn't

00:43:43.240 have to build a whole lot of trail you just have to connect the trails that are already existing and

00:43:48.680 people just kept jumping on board he said it was surprisingly easy and so he has trail clubs now in

00:43:55.800 most of the countries i think almost all of the countries that he needs to build this incredible

00:44:01.740 15 000 mile weird post-modern discontinuous trail called the appalachian trail right but can you

00:44:10.400 like yeah that begs the question like can you really call a trail a trail if there's like these gaps

00:44:14.640 right like you have to get on a boat or an airplane it's it's it's a really it's it's a new

00:44:20.440 conception of what a trail is i don't know people always say well how is a trail if you can't walk

00:44:24.920 there right are you gonna walk are you gonna walk on water are you gonna get on a on a ferry and

00:44:29.080 walk in circles you know how are you but that's for him it's not about walking uh it's about

00:44:35.980 it's about the the the line it's basically a line on a map and that's why i call it post-modern is

00:44:43.220 it's more about this this sort of text and the idea than it is about the physical structure i don't know

00:44:48.780 i mean i think it's it's a worthwhile project in the sense that it will connect all these countries

00:44:54.960 together and make them work together and create something people can walk a line people can follow

00:45:00.980 because you know the appalachian trail no one really walks it continuously anyway right you you go and

00:45:07.660 you you hitchhike into town once every five days you come back some people skip portions or they do it

00:45:13.820 over the course of years the shape of the appalachian trail changes every year i mean you can't really be

00:45:19.760 a purist about this stuff because as i said before trail is is much more liquid than we think

00:45:26.260 it is so once you start messing with the definition of what a trail is it's not such a leap to say that

00:45:33.580 this is one trail it's just you know got some pretty sizable gaps in the middle of it yeah well in your

00:45:41.180 epilogue it was one of my favorite parts because you you follow this guy nimble well nomad this guy who

00:45:46.860 he's like forest gum just decided to start walking one day and he's been walking ever since

00:45:51.340 but you tell us about him like what insights about nature and trails that we can gleam from his approach

00:45:59.260 to hiking yeah nimble well was a guy i wanted to talk to because i i i kept thinking about when i came

00:46:07.260 back from the appalachian trail what it what would have happened if i had kept hiking you know the one of

00:46:14.560 the things that people don't tell you very often is that you you go on these long hikes thinking

00:46:20.640 they're going to be transformative and they are you you are transformed right your body completely

00:46:26.180 changes your mind changes you you lose weight you lose the sort of all of your stress and your thinking

00:46:33.080 becomes clear and you're happier but then when you come home you transform back right because we're all

00:46:39.640 just in large part creatures of our environment you adapt to your environment so if you go back to

00:46:44.760 the same old environment you're going to become basically the same old person so i thought well

00:46:49.760 maybe if i want to keep that mental clarity and that happiness and and that fitness i should have just

00:46:55.460 kept hiking forever and so i looked around and said well who's someone who did that is there anyone

00:47:00.400 out there who kind of never stopped hiking and there are there are people here and there there's a guy

00:47:06.900 named billy goat who hikes the pacific crest trail every year and and there's uh some people who hike

00:47:12.680 the appalachian trail almost every year but the person who i found most fascinating was a guy named nimble

00:47:17.700 will nomad because he had just taken it to such an extreme you know people would tell me stories about

00:47:23.420 him they say oh he had all of his toenails surgically removed because he kept getting fungal infections or

00:47:28.680 he he only you know he only has this backpack with like 10 pounds of gear in it he doesn't own

00:47:34.640 anything else that's that's all he owns and and so i i looked around for him and i found him online

00:47:40.240 and i wrote to him and he kind of you know told me to screw off he didn't want to meet me but i said

00:47:46.540 no i really i you know i'm just i'm fascinated by you i i have to you know have to meet you so i wrote

00:47:52.680 to him and wrote to him wrote to him over i think it was years i think it may have been two years i wrote

00:47:56.740 to him finally he begrudgingly said okay fine you can come i'm going to be walking down this stretch

00:48:03.020 of highway in texas on this day and if you can find me you can walk with me so i flew down to

00:48:09.480 my sister's place in houston and we drove out on the highway on that day and there he was walking

00:48:14.640 down the side of the road so i pulled over and we gave him some ice cream and he said uh well you

00:48:20.700 found me you know so i got out and for three days we walked together and and i got to see during those

00:48:26.580 three days really what it means to to hone your life down to that single point of interest right

00:48:33.620 to live a life of of true simplicity of the way that we oftentimes romanticize but the reality of

00:48:40.800 it you know is not always as pretty as as you would want you know he he lives a pretty rough life he does

00:48:48.100 not have a whole lot of comforts in his life and he's a guy who's when i think when i met him he was

00:48:53.280 75 74 75 so he's sleeping on the hard ground every night you know he doesn't carry a he doesn't

00:49:01.620 carry a toothbrush so he just has a toothpick so i don't you know he's he's i'm not i'm not sure how

00:49:06.860 good his dental hygiene is but i know his doesn't carry toilet paper right he just uses like water he

00:49:13.420 he has just his life is very rough in a lot of ways and he has no safety net at all you know if he gets

00:49:20.660 sick or something happens to him out there he's probably gonna just die and he's fine with that

00:49:25.860 he said i'm you know my my grandfather died in the woods and my dad died in the woods and i'm working

00:49:31.220 on it he he really has gotten rid of his fear of death in a way that i find admirable but in other

00:49:37.080 ways you know his life is not something i'd want to emulate he he kind of just skims across the surface

00:49:44.080 of a lot of things his relationships with people are very thin he he he only talks to people for a

00:49:50.100 day or two and then he moves on you know and he doesn't have those deep connections those deep

00:49:55.580 rooted connections with the community that a lot of us need to feel a sense of belonging and purpose in

00:50:02.740 our lives he's he's totally free and being free is not a completely positive thing it's it's actually

00:50:10.920 quite a complicated thing right well being free isn't like you there's constraints right you have

00:50:16.840 yeah yeah there are constraints to his freedom as well there's there's always sacrifices you have to

00:50:22.660 make and i thought was interesting too is that his approach to nature you know we were talking earlier

00:50:27.820 about this dichotomy there's like there's civilization sort of man-made stuff and then there's

00:50:32.420 nature which is sort of this untouched by man but it seems like nimblewell sees things as just

00:50:38.760 part of like it's the world like everything like even the man-made stuff is part of nature

00:50:42.440 and doesn't bother him that he he'll follow a road and he has no problem with that um a lot of purists

00:50:49.140 were like well no you need to go out into the woods but he's like no it's a trail i'm going to follow it

00:50:52.460 yeah he doesn't draw that distinction at all and i thought that was really fascinating he that's actually

00:50:58.180 quite a that's a debate that's been going on they call it the great new wilderness debate is you know

00:51:03.840 the in the 1980s people like william cronin started deconstructing our understanding of

00:51:08.860 what wilderness is and what nature is and saying these are these are concepts these are historical

00:51:14.220 and cultural concepts that you know are not necessarily real these are things we've these

00:51:20.020 are sort of useful fictions and he's someone who's come to that without any academic background

00:51:26.240 and he just has come to that conclusion through his living he says you know if you got to go up onto

00:51:31.220 some big mountain in washington in order to feel happy and feel at peace then you've missed the

00:51:36.440 you missed the point entirely you got to be down there on the city streets seeing it the same way

00:51:41.500 you have to come to every aspect of your life with that same appreciation that most of us have when

00:51:47.880 we're in the wilderness he doesn't see it he doesn't see a distinction he walks out of the wilderness

00:51:51.860 he walks onto a highway he walks into a shopping mall and he's looking at it all as natural things

00:51:57.320 right because people are are natural humans are natural animals as well we're all everything in a

00:52:02.560 sense is natural to him and so he's outlook on life is really beautiful in that way but also uh

00:52:09.680 you know he it's funny because certain things don't bother him as much as i think they should you know

00:52:16.900 he he's not terribly bothered by pollution one day we were we we stopped to fill up our bottles with

00:52:22.760 water and this it was in the town of port arthur texas which is a oil refinery town and the water

00:52:28.180 just smelled foul it smelled like like kerosene and i was outraged you know i said these people's

00:52:33.420 groundwater is poison and he's like yeah that happens around here you know and and just sort of shrugged

00:52:39.300 it off and we got into this big argument about pollution and environmental regulation and climate change

00:52:44.220 and he you know for a guy who spends all his time outdoors and he's he's really uh quite a i mean he's he's

00:52:51.760 pretty far right when it comes to a lot of those issues and that a lot of that springs from the

00:52:56.920 factory says well lou you know this is that's the world we live in it's you know what are we going to

00:53:01.560 do so are we going to go back to the days of of you know the the wagon and you know plowing a field

00:53:07.360 with an ox if not then you have to come to grips with that which is you know that's that's a tough

00:53:12.480 stance to take and it's not something i agree with but he that that complex outlook on on wilderness

00:53:20.640 and on nature is something that i've found really useful to have to grapple with right yeah for him

00:53:26.640 the oil refinery is just like a volcano yeah it's just yeah yeah or it's or you know or or maybe it's

00:53:32.500 like how you look at a you know i don't know a castle or something in another country because when you

00:53:38.680 do take that step back and you just appreciate it for what it is an oil refinery is kind of beautiful

00:53:45.520 you know it's industry can be can be beautiful and and you know it's also kind of monstrous in

00:53:52.600 in the same way that a that a castle or a volcano can be monstrous well robert this has been a great

00:53:58.280 conversation there's a lot more we could talk about so i encourage people to go get your book where can

00:54:02.680 people learn more about your work well there's a couple places you can go on my website robertmoore.com

00:54:07.980 i don't update it very often of course i've got a twitter feed but you know most importantly i'd say go out

00:54:13.260 and buy the book right right now is a really good time the paperback comes out july 4th so i think a

00:54:19.460 lot of places have the hardcover on sale and the hardcover is a really beautiful object you know the

00:54:24.700 the the book as an object is something i care a lot about and the people at simon and schuster did an

00:54:30.260 incredible job it won the or was listed as one of the top 10 book covers of the year by the new york

00:54:36.440 times so it's just this beautiful beautiful object so i'd say go out find the hardcover start there

00:54:41.200 awesome well robert moore thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure thank you this has

00:54:44.800 been great my guest today was robert moore he's the author of the book on trails it's now available

00:54:49.360 in paperback on amazon.com so go check it out get that it's a really great book great summertime read

00:54:54.500 you can also find out more information about his work at robert moore.com that's m-o-o-r.com no e at

00:54:59.540 the end also check out our show notes at aom.is slash trails where you can find links to resources

00:55:04.080 where you can delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the art of

00:55:20.440 manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website

00:55:24.280 at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy this show i've got something out of it i'd appreciate it if you

00:55:28.140 give us review on itunes or stitcher that helps us out a lot as always thank you for your continued

00:55:32.000 support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay madly

The Art of Manliness - July 03, 2017

#318： Exploring Life's Trails, Literally and Metaphorically

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