The Way Around

“Smart, funny, wise of mind and vast of heart, The Way Around offers a beautiful, intricate rebuke to our obsession with linearity and outcome. In place of the summit, it argues for the circumambulation; in place of the line, the circle; in place of the goal, the return. Over its course, the book buds its own subtle circles—kora, ourobouros, beaten bounds—and its patterns and rhythms begin to reshape themselves into rings and revolutions, until on the final pages both reader and writer are returned to the point of origin—though, of course, profoundly changed by the circumambulation that has brought them there.”—Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland: A Deep Time Journey

“This is the kind of book my soul perpetually yearns for: a ravenously curious, fiercely big-hearted exploration of a topic as vast as the cosmos and as small as a city block. It reshaped how I see the world.”—Robert Moor, author of On Trails: An Exploration

“You can’t read this book from left to right—instead you’ll swirl through, dervish-like. Trust Nicholas Triolo—his gorgeous, clear-eyed words and hard-earned footfalls—with every hair on your head. He’s done the good hard work here, stacking cairns along the trail’s curvature, seeking direction from monks and poets. He’s more than just following their lead, though. He slogs through mud, suffers blisters—but the whole route courses through atrium and ventricle. I’d follow this writer anywhere, for he’s gone to the place where we began, where we can begin again. The Way Around is the rarest and truest kind of adventure tale: the kind that can reclaim us from our lost, all-too-linear selves.”—Amy Irvine, author of Desert Cabal

“To circumambulate three targets as diverse as Kailash, Mount Tam, and Montana’s hellacious Berkeley Pit called for a sense of humor as blithe as his endurance and courage are brutal, plus a sense of the surreal as unique as early Brautigan. The Triolo solo that resulted felt as though Nick somehow swallowed a choir. I consider The Way Around one of the finest first books I’ve read in my life.”—David James Duncan, author of Sun House

“I read in constant search of books like The Way Around, a debut of striking originality and singular contact with landscape. In a richly conceived act of gracious yet feral resistance, author/guide/contemplative Nick Triolo takes what the great Nan Shepherd called the ‘unpath’ around the mountain and returns to the everyday world with a story of renewed collective calling and urgently needed hope.”—Chris Dombrowski, author of The River You Touch

Nicholas Triolo is a writer, filmmaker, photographer, activist, and long-distance trail runner. His writing and images have been featured in Orion, Outside, Terrain.org, and Trail Runner. He has directed two documentary films, “The Crossing” and “Shaped by Fire,” and collaborated with Salomon on a film about touring and training Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard. Triolo’s films have been Official Selections for several international film festivals and featured on influential platforms such as Patagonia’s Dirtbag Diaries, Upworthy, and Outside magazine. Triolo is based in Missoula, Montana.