BOOK REVIEW : A Road Beckons, the Mind Wanders : WALKING THE TRAIL; One Man’s Journey Along the Cherokee Trail of Tears <i> by Jerry Ellis</i> , Delacorte, $19; 272 pages

“Were you born crazy?” a stranger asks Jerry Ellis, “or did something happen along the way?”

Ellis is not exactly crazy, but he is something of a character--a backcountry metaphysician, an extravagantly sentimental storyteller, a man-child with spiritual and sensual appetites, a survivor of the ‘60s who still favors the philosophical garb of the counterculture.

In other words, Jerry Ellis is an ideal companion for a long ramble along the back roads of America, which is precisely what he provides in “Walking the Trail,” a picaresque account of his trek over the Trail of Tears in commemoration of his Cherokee ancestors and in search of some elusive ideal of freedom and fulfillment.

“I am a child on the Trail of Tears,” he sings after happening upon a winery and sampling “the stuff poets are made of.” “Time has no beginning. Time has no end. Anything is possible.”

As Ellis explains, the Trail of Tears refers to the long march of 18,000 men, women and children of the Cherokee nation who, in 1838, were herded at gunpoint from their homes in Alabama and neighboring states of the Old South to reservations in what is now Oklahoma. Ellis retraced their route in reverse, and tells the story of his journey through history and memory in “Walking the Trail.”

Along the way, Ellis contemplates the fate of the Cherokee nation in the 19th Century even as he confronts the folkways of America in the late 20th Century. He shows us a world of general stores and country churches, utopian communes and honky-tonk bars. And he introduces us to a collection of characters--some of them welcoming, some of them weird--that are too vivid for mere fiction.

One wholesome fellow invites him to dinner with the wife and family--and when the kids are safely tucked away, he lights up a hash pipe shaped like a human skull. The leader of a sectarian commune explains that the planet is guarded by flying saucers. Another man explains that Cherokee men who served in Vietnam are still under the influence of a war spell cast by Chief Dragging Canoe in 1792.

It’s surprising how many of these strangers invite Ellis into their homes and their lives--but it turns out that they are hopelessly beguiled by the footloose wanderer who pursues his own crazy vision, and Ellis is perfectly willing to play the role of the seducer.

“Do it,” he tells a college administrator who admits to the dream of becoming a singer. “If you don’t, it’ll haunt you the rest of your life.”

His flights of fancy lead him to a here-and-now America where even a country stream is polluted with castoff hypodermic needles and used condoms. To his credit, Ellis is willing to reveal his doubts as well as his ecstasies: “I am a song pulsating in the night . . . “ he sings out, and then: “Am I simply a desperate and poetic misfit in a sometimes less-than-hilarious high-tech world?”

He may be a misfit, but he is an honest and endearing one. “I wanted the walk to be pure and as spiritual as possible,” he confesses. “But the reality is that the Trail wanders through a modern America that is as tainted as me.”

Next: Richard Eder reviews “Father Must” by Rick Rofihe (FSG) .