A Trail Through Leaves leaves a woman’s tales to the mind. Hannah Hinchman intimately shares her portrait of a connection with nature; the synchronized and beautiful world. It is the reason for this novel which deconstructs anything solely human and brings about the reunion of inner-personal thought with natural landscape. Hinchman began writing journals, as noted in the beginning of the book, to define herself in the world as sole and single object. As time progressed this lonely and egotistical view faded as she began to incorporate nature into her thought process as shown through her journal. Rather than creating, erasing and recreating herself in notebook pages, she created and destroyed relationships with nature. This book is almost revolutionary in American modern press for it strains to include landscape as something irremovable from the self. A Trail Through the Leaves is written as an example of how to redirect the spirit to living within the natural world.
The novel is difficult to relate because it is self-directed. Hinchman’s writing is not written sparsely wide for all audience, but rather tall for herself. The philosophy is not written, but it is shown in example. It is the difference between using an autobiography or scripture as methods to lead ones life. Therefore the reader of Hinchman’s novel if not empathetic or relating to her measure of nature can use this only as a guide to write their own. Calling it a novel is rather difficult, in both reading the text of the book as well as the subtitle: The Journal as a path to place”. Hannah Hinchman’s A Trail Through Leaves is a published example of how someone is to lead their own introspective into the arms of nature. It is a beautifully written, methodical and artistic account of the self captured by nature; something that challenges the writing of western diary (a purely devoid inner).