Out of Eden Walk

12/01/2025

🥾 In 2013, alongside walking partners, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Paul Salopek set out from the Rift Valley of Ethiopia—one of cradles of humankind—to retrace, on foot, the dawn voyage of the earliest Homo sapiens who first walked out of Africa during the Stone Age.

For 13 years, Paul has paced off 17,000 miles of those ancestral trails, calipering Arabian deserts, empty Central Asian steppes, icy Himalayan peaks, Burmese war zones, and the vastness of mainland China.

✍️ Out of Eden Walk is a continuous storytelling journey: Paul has never left his walking trail to return to the United States.

Hence, Paul’s recent landfall in Alaska, after crossing the Pacific Ocean from Japan on a container ship, marks a threshold in this voyage of slow journalism: The beginning of the final phase of a 38,000-kilometer odyssey in the wake of our roving ancestors.

In 2026, Paul will need your help in documenting a changing Americas on his ramble south to reach our species’ original “land’s end” in Tierra del Fuego.

The Walk is not just a feat of physical endurance. Its core mission is more meaningful: To chronicle the insights of people met en route, from Djiboutian camel shepherds to Kazakh geophysicists, from Chinese poets to Iñupiat artisans, building a nuanced record of human life in the early 21st century and touching on pressing dilemmas of our day—war, mass migration, spiritual isolation, sustainability, cultural adaptation, and more—as seen from boot level, with a creative output that so far approaches a million words and tens of thousands of images.

Independent journalism requires public support.

🌱 Join our annual crowdfunder today. 100% of funds raised go toward our mission to connect people across borders through the power of slow storytelling.

Out of Eden Walk is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

🔗 To learn more and donate, please visit outofedenwalknonprofit.org/campaign

Thank you! 🙏

Pictured: Photos by Paul Salopek from Out of Eden Walk Chapter 1: Out of Africa, which includes Ethiopia, Djibouti, and a crossing of the Red Sea.

Learn the stories behind these images: Visit www.outofedenwalk.org to read Chapter 1’s dispatches from the trail ✍️

11/30/2025

✍️ “I roam the ship’s passageways at all hours, confused, groggy-eyed, strung out in a fog of misfiring neurons. My parietal cortex, that quadrant of my brain cued to time perception, stretches like warmed rubber in four directions:

First, my body is synced to Japan time. (GMT +9.) Second, my mind is cued to a slew of ‘daytime’ work communications—phone calls, emails, text messages—all pegged to my ultimate destination, Alaska. (GMT -9.) Then there is the palpable tug of a chronological bubble called ‘ship’s time.’ According to calculations that only captain Lechowski understands, he orders the ship’s clocks to advance with the push of a button from the bridge. On the fourth day at sea, he compresses an afternoon by three hours; on the sixth day he skips ahead two hours more, etc. In this way, the crew maintains equitable work shifts as we swallow time zones on our eastward journey into dawn. And finally, there is the gauzy reality of ‘natural time.’ Glance out a porthole: Light or darkness mark the hour, minute, and second that slips beneath the keel at our actual longitude. One morning it is Philippines time. Two afternoons later, it becomes Vanuatu time. Steaming over the International Dateline, marked at 180 degrees longitude and squiggling from pole to pole east of Hawaii, we snap backwards into yesterday.”

— Paul Salopek, “Blue Highway” 🌊

🔗 Read Paul’s new dispatch from the Out of Eden Walk journey, “Blue Highway,” about crossing the North Pacific aboard a container ship: https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/blue-highway/

🥾 Out of Eden Walk is a 38,000 kilometer walk across the world in the footsteps of our ancestors.

✍️ Learn more about the journey and support our slow journalism during the Out of Eden Walk nonprofit organization’s annual crowdfunder, which is taking place now at the link in our bio and at www.outofedenwalknonprofit.org/campaign

Thank you to everyone who has donated so far! Our community keeps us moving forward.

Videography by Paul Salopek. Editing by Chisomo Kawaga.

11/28/2025

✍️ “Meet Dan John Caballero. Twenty-nine years old. Husky. Driven. No-nonsense to the point of blunt. The second officer of the Maersk San Vicente. ‘I want to be a captain pretty soon,’ he tells me matter-of-factly. ‘I have dreams.’

Early in his young career Caballero was forced to abandon a container ship on fire. He recalls smoke and shouting. And diving from the deck railings as though from a high cliff . . . falling, falling, falling into the moiling waves below. This disaster occurred on an older vessel, with a different company, in a different ocean. He is writing a book about it. He taps out words on the glowing screen of his smart phone during breaks from the brutal middle watch, which lasts from midnight to 4 a.m. Every 12 minutes, an automatic alarm clangs on the blacked-out bridge. Its loud jangling shakes the calm oceanic darkness. Caballero gets up from the captain’s seat to disarm it, again and again, with the press of a red button. It is meant to keep the watchman alert through the night. Caballero is from Cebu, the Filipino port where Ferdinand Magellan planted a cross before falling to a blow from a Filipino cutlass. Derived from the Cebuano word sugbú, the city’s name means ‘to dive into water.’”

— Paul Salopek, “Blue Highway” 🌊

🔗 Read Paul’s newest dispatch from the Out of Eden Walk journey, “Blue Highway,” about crossing the North Pacific aboard a container ship: https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/blue-highway

Out of Eden Walk is a 38,000-kilometer walk across the world in the footsteps of our ancestors. Learn more and donate to the Out of Eden Walk nonprofit organization during our annual crowdfunder, taking place now at this link: https://www.outofedenwalknonprofit.org/campaign

Thank you to everyone who has donated so far! Our community keeps us moving forward. 🙏

Pictured: Dan John Caballero

📷 Photo by Paul Salopek

Image description in comments.

11/27/2025

✍️🥾 Out of Eden Walk is a 38,000-kilometer walk across the world in the footsteps of our ancestors. We’re grateful for our global community of readers, teachers, students, and fellow travelers. Thank you to everyone who has donated so far to support the Out of Eden Walk nonprofit organization during our annual crowdfunder!

✨ During our crowdfunder, the Out of Eden Walk nonprofit Board of Directors is matching every donation at a 1:1 ratio up to $45,000, doubling every dollar donated for twice the impact.

🌱🌱 Learn more and donate here: https://outofedenwalknonprofit.org/campaign

With your support, Out of Eden Walk has:

🥾 Traversed 21 countries and 17,000+ miles on foot from the Rift Valley in Ethiopia to arrive in North America this year. The final two continents on the global route lie ahead.

🗞️ Trained 100+ journalists in long-form, place-based reportage, generating stories that reached 25 million readers in India alone and many more in countries including Japan, China, and Myanmar.

📖 Collaborated on educational programs that reach 70,000+ students in 70 countries.

🗺️ Provided training to 1,100+ university faculty in media literacy, geography, anthropology, and history.

✍️ Published 500+ dispatches and 100+ guest dispatches translated into 34 languages.

✍️ Released 13 National Geographic Magazine feature stories, with another forthcoming in 2026.

🌐 Partnered with The World on an ongoing interview series exploring global issues through the Walk.

🗣️ Updated the HomeStories map in partnership with Esri to better serve a global community of 2,000+ lifelong learners and storytellers.

🎨 Co-curated the “Walking Korea: Cut Pieces” exhibition that explored the act of walking as a form of artistic and historical intervention, interpreting migration, displacement, and temporality through the works of six contemporary artists in Seoul, Korea.

✍️ Reached an audience of 45+ million readers worldwide.

Thank you to this community for making the journey possible. 🙏

📷 Pictured: Members of the Out of Eden Walk nonprofit team, including Paul Salopek, Julia Payne, and Arati Kumar-Rao in Shishmaref, Alaska.

Photo by Paul Salopek.

Image description in comments.

11/27/2025

✍️ “In my spartan cabin that night I lie awake listening. Thousands of cargo containers rub against each other inside the holds. They groan and squeak through the steel bulkheads in a doleful, low-decibel symphony as the ship torques its way atop a plain of water. Maybe a herd of dinosaurs sounded like this.”

— Paul Salopek, “Blue Highway” 🌊

Below, read Paul’s newest dispatch from the Out of Eden Walk journey, “Blue Highway,” about crossing the North Pacific aboard a container ship.

Across the North Pacific by container ship.

11/27/2025

“The way I try to think about ‘slow journalism’ is that it’s not just about slowing down. It’s much more profound than that. It’s the whole way of looking at how current events shape the lives of each one of us. Slow journalism implies having a hunter-gatherer mindset where you don’t know what the story is. You go out open-minded into the world to find the stories or have them find you.” —Paul Salopek in Outside Magazine

Read the full story here: https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/hiking-and-backpacking/what-its-like-world-walk/

In 2013, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Paul Salopek walked out of Ethiopia’s Rift Valley, the beginning of a seven-year journey on foot to follow the trails of the first Homo Sapiens. Two continents and 13 years later, Salopek has returned to North America for the first time in over a decade to continue his worldwide trek.

11/26/2025

Paul Salopek in Outside Magazine: “Walking is like a meditation—it unleashes this kind of movie in your head about your life that you play over and over again. It’s this internal reexamination and kind of a reverie that happens simultaneously when your neurons are firing because they are being exposed to the outer world. You’re feeling the sun on your skin, you’re hot and sweaty, your big toe hurts or you’re thirsty or you hear beautiful birdsong. There’s something about walking, this inward outwardness happening simultaneously that I think cannot help, if not make you a better person, at least a more empathetic one, including to yourself.”

✍️ From Outside: “In 2013, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Paul Salopek walked out of Ethiopia’s Rift Valley, the beginning of a seven-year journey on foot to follow the trails of the first Homo Sapiens. Two continents and 13 years later, Salopek has returned to North America for the first time in over a decade to continue his worldwide trek. This spring, he will begin the final phase of his 24,000-mile odyssey—walking to the southern tip of South America. Outside caught up with Salopek during a layover in Gustavus, Alaska.”

Read the full story here: https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/hiking-and-backpacking/what-its-like-world-walk

Pictured: Paul Salopek on the Out of Eden Walk.

Image description in comments.

11/26/2025

✍️ “‘The sea never changes.’

Meet Wojciech Lechowski. A merchant captain from the Baltic coast of Poland. Wry. Friendly. Burly and big-boned, if under-exercised in the way of ship’s officers after years spent at sea. Lechowski is prone to such Olympian statements. It is a laconic tic of command.

What he means is this:

One day the wind blows; the next day the ocean waves grow. The currents of the subpolar gyre spin across the Pacific Ocean in just one direction: clockwise. The Arctic greys at 50 degrees north latitude—metallic skies and graphite seas near the Aleutians—freeze out every other color in nature, and will likely do so until the end of time. Against such primal forces of salt water, it is human affairs that seem fickle, unsettled, ephemeral, puny, even absurd. The sea never changes.”

— Paul Salopek, “Blue Highway” 🌊

🔗 Read Paul’s newest dispatch from the Out of Eden Walk journey, “Blue Highway,” about crossing the North Pacific aboard a container ship: https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/blue-highway/

Pictured:

Photo one: Capt. Wojciech Lechowski

Photo two: Obsidian waves

Photo three: The Maersk San Vicente docked in Yokohama. Hundreds of shipping containers are loaded and offloaded in hours.

Photo four: Capt. Wojciech Lechowki (left) and third officer Sherwin Tumambo on the bridge. The red light preserves night vision after dark.

Photo five: The tops of high waves are illuminated like stars on the radar display of the Maersk San Vicente.

📷 Photos by Paul Salopek

Image descriptions in comments.

11/26/2025

🥾 During our annual crowdfunder, the Out of Eden Walk nonprofit Board of Directors is matching every donation at a 1:1 ratio up to $45,000, so every dollar is doubled for twice the impact.

🌱 Support the journey ahead by donating here: https://outofedenwalknonprofit.org/campaign

So far, because of your generosity, we've raised $21,816 of our $75,000 goal.

Thank you to our Board of Directors and to this community for helping to maximize this opportunity! Our community keeps us moving.

Photo of Paul Salopek by Julia Payne. Image description in comments.

11/25/2025

✍️ “I’m less than an afterthought in this whirling, titanic, and otherworldly ballet: a journalist crossing the planet on foot, displacing 80 kilos of mass aboard ship. Thirteen years ago, I trekked out of Ethiopia to retrace the pathways of our nomadic Stone Age ancestors. I conduct interviews. I scribble what I see along the way. Now, having reached the last rim of Asia, I’ve run out of solid ground. So I’m hitching a ride to the Americas on the Maersk San Vicente. The quirks of my journey don’t leave [Capt. Wojciech] Lechowski particularly impressed. All manner of foolishness washes up with the tides. The sea never changes.

‘You are free to use our gym,’ he tells me, without the least flicker of sarcasm, ‘to stay in shape.’

Look at the ship.

Painted swimming-pool blue, its hull rises above the docks at Yokohama like a steel tsunami. Above the deck railings towers another rampart of stacked orange, grey, and red containers. And then, even higher: the glassy wheelhouse that is Lechowski’s floating office. I squint up at it. My yellow plastic helmet—safety kit required by Japanese port authorities—drops from my head and spins on the concrete pier.

By the latest engineering yardsticks, the Maersk San Vicente ranks as only a mid-size container ship. Yet its sheer scale—the fantastical, outsize, W***y Wonka hugeness of its construction—is impossible to take as a matter of course.

The vessel measures 300 meters from bow to stern, about four city blocks. Jog eight circuits around its deck and you’ll complete a five-kilometer run.”

— Paul Salopek, “Blue Highway”

🔗 Read Paul’s newest dispatch from the Out of Eden Walk journey, “Blue Highway,” about crossing the North Pacific aboard a container ship: https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/blue-highway

Videography by Paul Salopek. Editing by Chisomo Kawaga.

Video description in comments.

11/25/2025

🥾✍️ We’re expressing our thanks for everyone who has donated so far to support the Out of Eden Walk nonprofit organization during our annual crowdfunder. We’re grateful for your generosity and enthusiasm for our slow journalism!

👣 Out of Eden Walk is a 38,000-kilometer walk across the world in the footsteps of our ancestors.

✨ During our crowdfunder, the Out of Eden Walk nonprofit Board of Directors is matching every donation at a 1:1 ratio up to $45,000, doubling every dollar donated for twice the impact.

🔗 Learn more and donate here: https://outofedenwalknonprofit.org/campaign

With your support, Out of Eden Walk has:

🥾 Traversed 21 countries and 17,000+ miles on foot from the Rift Valley in Ethiopia to arrive in North America this year. The final two continents on the global route lie ahead.

🗞️ Trained 100+ journalists in long-form, place-based reportage, generating stories that reached 25 million readers in India alone and many more in countries including Japan, China, & Myanmar.

📖 Collaborated on educational programs that reach 70,000+ students in 70 countries.

🗺️ Provided training to 1,100+ university faculty in media literacy, geography, anthropology, and history.

✍️ Published 500+ dispatches and 100+ guest dispatches translated into 34 languages.

✍️ Released 13 National Geographic Magazine feature stories, with another forthcoming in 2026.

🌐 Partnered with The World on an ongoing interview series exploring global issues through the Walk.

🗣️ Updated the HomeStories map in partnership with Esri to better serve a global community of 2,000+ lifelong learners and storytellers.

🎨 Co-curated the “Walking Korea: Cut Pieces” exhibition that explored the act of walking as a form of artistic and historical intervention, interpreting migration, displacement, and temporality through the works of six contemporary artists in Seoul, Korea.

✍️ Reached an audience of over 45 million readers worldwide.

Thank you again for making this journey possible. 🙏

📷 Pictured: Paul Salopek and Walking Partners in China.

Photo by Paul Salopek.

Image description in comments.

11/23/2025

Paul Salopek talks with artist Gary Sockpick in Shishmaref, Alaska. Gary uses materials and processes passed down through generations. His son is also an artist in Shishmaref.

Out of Eden Walk is a 38,000-kilometer walk across the world in the footsteps of our ancestors. After 13 years walking steadily toward sunrise out of Africa, the Walk has stepped out of Asia and onto the shores of North America.

Ahead stretch thousands of miles of tundra, boreal forests, and Indigenous homelands—places already transforming under the pressures of climate change, resource competition, migration, and profound cultural resilience.

The slow, mindful journey being made by Paul Salopek and Walking Partners reminds us that many of the solutions to humanity’s common problems often reside in the quiet wisdom beating within our shared stories.

No matter the landscapes being traversed or the belief systems being explored, the Out of Eden Walk remains primarily a listening journey; a true quest of the heart where people, not places, are the destination.

As we expand educational partnerships along the North American trail, we will continue collaborating with local journalists, scientists, farmers, photographers, poets, walkers, and students—inviting them to join the trail and weave their experiences into the kaleidoscopic braid of the Walk’s narratives.

We need your support to complete this next long chapter of our storytelling trek and to share it along the way.

🔗 To support the Out of Eden Walk nonprofit organization during our annual crowdfunder, tap the link in our bio or visit www.outofedenwalknonprofit.org/campaign

✨ The Out of Eden Walk nonprofit Board of Directors is matching all gifts dollar-for-dollar up to $45,000, so when you donate to support our slow journalism, your impact is doubled.

Thank you all for being part of this journey 🥾

Videography by Arati Kumar-Rao and Paul Salopek. Editing by Erin Williams.

Thank you to Gary Sockpick for sharing conversation, time, and your artistry.