A new Strook, with something I have read, drawn, and listened to:

Reading

Next week, I will be walking part of the West Highland Way in Scotland. In On Trails, Robert Moor wonders, while walking the 3,000 km long Appalachian Trail, how trails are created. This leads him from millions of years old fossil tracks, past ancient Indian trails to the navigational talents of animals such as elephants and ants. Even Kevin Kelly1 makes an appearance when it comes to digital networks.

I was afraid this book would be too philosophical, but On Trails reads like a delightful mix between books such as 1491 and Sapiens, light-hearted hiking books such as Bill Bryson's Walk in the Woods, and classic nature writers such as Thoreau and John Muir.

In his quest, Robert Moor realizes that paths help us to better understand the world. Hikers are rarely really looking for wilderness, but for simplicity. An escape from modern civilization with its branching paths.

And those ants? They turn out to be the best trailblazers of all.

Signs

My father first visited Ireland in the 1970s. Every year, he marked the roads he had driven on the map2. For his birthday, I drew only the roads he had marked at the time. The roads thus form the contours of the island, without me having to draw the coastline itself.

Listening

Last Monday, I saw Naive Set and Nap Eyes at Renée's. It was a pleasant evening in Rotterdam. You pay what you can for admission, and in addition to performances, there is also room for a talk. The Dutch band Naive Set makes, as they describe it themselves, jingly-jangly indie pop, which I enjoy listening to. Listen, for example, to the cheerful American Flag or the beautiful No Relation.

Naive Set caught the attention of Nap Eyes, with whom they are currently touring. The Canadian Americana band played ridiculously well, but unfortunately, due to my broken brain, I had to leave the concert early. Luckily, I caught my favorite song, Everytime the Feeling. The band also turned out to have a dry sense of humor on stage, something that can also be heard in my other favorite: Mark Zuckerberg.

Is Mark Zuckerberg a ghost?
Maybe, maybe
Where are his hands?
And why don't you ever see them in public?

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No Strook next week, see you in two weeks!

1

"A single path reduces complexity and makes traveling easier, but if you connect a thousand paths, you suddenly have a maze that you can't get out of without a guide. Similarly, the internet is such an extensive network of paths that it has become a wilderness in itself, 'an uncharted, almost wild area where you can literally get lost,' wrote Kevin Kelly."

2

Many more Irish roads have been added since then.