The Way Around: A Field Guide to Going Nowhere

Educator and ultramarathoner Triolo’s poignant if meandering debut explores circumambulation, the ancient practice of walking in circles around a fixed point, like a mountain. Triolo strives to understand not just the practice’s origins and meaning but also his own interiority after having collapsed and felt like “something cracked open” during a 100-mile race. He circumambulates Mount Kailash in Tibet (a sacred site for many religions), Mount Tamalpais in California (beloved by Beat poets), and the toxic Berkeley Pit Complex in Montana. Along the way, he considers everything from imperialism to surveillance, climate change to his mother’s breast cancer diagnosis. Citing several millennia-worth of thinkers who have considered the spiritual significance of the circle, Triolo connects circumambulation to attempts to push back against a consumerist, achievement-driven lifestyle as he learns how to “hold the center together with the pressing of your dumb feet.” At the center of the circle is some form of God, according to cultures that engage in the practice, though it is “dethroning the Self” that is the aim of circumambulation. As such, readers are left without much sense of the author who has taken them on this journey, although that’s partially the point, as the narrative touches on various ideas about self-abnegation. It’s a sometimes too circuitous search for meaning that nonetheless offers some powerful insights. (July)