Journalist Isaac Fitzgerald’s new book, “American Rambler,” details his quest to walk Johnny Appleseed’s trail. The book reveals Johnny Appleseed’s trees were for hard cider, not the wholesome eating apples we know today. Fitzgerald’s journey concludes with reflections on his mother’s death in February 2024. The Johnny Appleseed Trail of North Central Massachusetts — named for John Chapman, the folk hero who spread apple orchards across the American frontier in the early 1800s — is not actually a trail. It’s a stretch of highway, branded for tourism and designed for motorists. Isaac Fitzgerald discovered this in March 2023. The journalist, then in his late 30s, arrived at the Johnny Appleseed Visitors’ Center near the Lancaster-Leominster line with a backpack full of borrowed camping gear, his father’s hiking boots on his feet and a plan that was part literary quest, part family visit and part personal dare.…