I’ve just been dipping into a proof I’ve been sent by Aurum Press (publisher of my Telegraph travel anthologies) of a book it will be bringing out next month: On Trails, by a young American writer, Robert Moor. As the title suggests, it’s about paths — how we make them and how they make us. It’s part investigation, part meditation, prompted by Moor’s five-month, 2,000-mile walk from Georgia to Maine along the Appalachian Trail. In his prologue, he promises it will touch on the  role of trails in history, ecology and the journeys of life. I’m sure it’s one I’m going to enjoy.

Flicking through the book, I found that among those the author thanks in the acknowledgments is the poet Gary Snyder. Which reminds me: I’ve been meaning to link to a recent New York Times column by Timothy Egan on  how writers have done their bit for America’s national parks, a column in which Snyder gets an honourable mention.