Paul Salopek
paulsalopek.social
Paul Salopek
@paulsalopek.social
What a strange thing! to be alive beneath cherry blossoms. ― Kobayashi Issa, 18th century The @outofedenwalk trail begins in #Japan. #EdenWalk
July 10, 2025 at 2:13 PM
A quiet forest trail. An old hunter carrying a bucket of wild chestnuts for boar traps, a stooped ghost from the past—some ronin with sheathed blade across his shoulders. Then: the roaring void of a modern highway. #Japan Milestone 103. @outofedenwalk https://t.co/9Q9KqAkoYv
July 10, 2025 at 2:12 PM
Walking across #Kazakhstan on the @outofedenwalk, I befriended the archeologist Andrey Astafyev. Astafyev & his family helped me plant caches of food & water across a vast & desolately beautiful grasslands called #Mangystau. Today, he’s stumbled across a ‘lost city’ there. 1/
July 10, 2025 at 2:12 PM
Walking across the world you hit coastlines. So you hop cargo ships. And on these vessels you meet characters. Like Jamal Osili, an engineer on the Red Sea who swoons over recorded birdsongs. Or 27 tipsy Turkish truckers floating in the Caspian. @TheWorld
https://t.co/LmT9x7EABB
July 10, 2025 at 2:12 PM
An exhibition in Paris, at the Picasso Museum, recalls the rise of fascism in Europe through the control of the imagination: Demonizing art led to dehumanizing people. The Nazis branded all nontraditional & unpatriotic art “degenerate.” Sound familiar? 1/ https://t.co/AjdNZQhkcd
July 10, 2025 at 2:11 PM
MILESTONE #102 of @outofedenwalk: A little instant coffee. A little Hemingway's 'Old Man & the Sea,' A little immigration law-breaking. A little melancholy. The latest 100-mile recording of the surface of the Earth on a trek from Africa to South America. https://t.co/vpmTiC6Kag
July 10, 2025 at 2:11 PM
South Koreans recently voted with their feet: When their president tried to steal power in a coup, colossal protests jammed the streets. That president is now impeached. Maybe #Korea should add K-democracy to its other main export—#Kpop. @outofedenwalk https://t.co/GwRHnuXDXX
July 10, 2025 at 2:11 PM
The @outofedenwalk has a newly designed web site that includes some cool mapping features. Take stroll through our trove of half a million words & thousands of photos and videos. Let us know if you hit any obstacles. https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org
July 10, 2025 at 2:11 PM
What are those dots strung out across the world? Milestones: In-the-moment recordings taken 100 miles apart on a walk from Africa to South America. The landscape. The people. This one's at the Korean DMZ. Check out the @ArcGISStoryMaps. @outofedenwalk https://t.co/KMWPVorSbD
July 10, 2025 at 2:11 PM
South #Korea appears to occupy a peninsula: In truth, it's an island, ringed by minefields & the sea. A report from a hike thru an outpost of contradictions--including soy-sauce maestros, old-fashioned courtesans, & 1/4 million pro-democracy protesters. https://t.co/GwRHnuXDXX
July 10, 2025 at 2:11 PM
Avisha Jain walked 150 km along the Luni River in #India, expecting to find a beloved lifeline. Instead she saw a river on life support—plundered for sand & polluted. Another sobering yet lively @moving_upstream report from our partners at @veditum https://t.co/bgPSKz1eag
July 10, 2025 at 2:10 PM
After plodding for 2 blistering months across the #Korean peninsula, walking partner Lee Junseok logged a GPS map of personal waypoints. It's Homeric: wasp stings, surprise Mexican lunches, monsoon downpours, English high tea in village huts, K-pop malls. https://t.co/Uyo8KaPGMy
July 10, 2025 at 2:10 PM
A comedian’s union joins massive protests in #Turkey against the increasingly authoritarian rule of president Erdoğan, who imprisoned his main opposition a week ago. Turkey’s democracy & economy have tumbled backwards since @outofedenwalk hiked through in 2014. 📸Nil Delahaye.
July 10, 2025 at 2:10 PM
‘It's no fish ye're buying—it’s men's lives,’ wrote Walter Scott, 19th century poet, about the fatal risks faced by deep-sea fishers. Actually, it’s fishes lives you’re buying: 1 to 2.7 trillion wild ocean fish a year are eaten by humans. Busan fish market, South #Korea
July 10, 2025 at 2:10 PM
Walking partner Junseok Lee (left) & photographer Jun Michael Park step to the finish line of the @outofedenwalk in South #Korea, the port of #Busan. Busan-born, Lee wept when he finally reached dockside. Unspooling behind: two months of blistering summer trails.
July 10, 2025 at 2:10 PM
It seems like another lifetime-the memory is so awful-but #COVID began erupting cross the globe only 5 years ago. I was walking in #Myanmar when the virus erupted. My 4-story hotel emptied overnight. Starvation became a reality. A look back with @TheWorld. https://t.co/jmNNRvdLDl
July 10, 2025 at 2:10 PM
Family farmers toil in small plots near the end of @outofedenwalk’s 650-kilometer foot trail through South #Korea, the port city of #Busan, visible in the distance. #EdenWalk
July 10, 2025 at 2:10 PM
Frog ecologist Jang Yikweon searches rice paddies near Miryang, South #Korea, for frogs, which are threatened by habitat loss to massive economic development: rapid urbanization and industrial agriculture. A tree frog, Dryophytes japonicus is among his quarry. #EdenWalk
July 10, 2025 at 2:10 PM
Serious play. Walking partner Junseok Lee and field biologist Jang Yikweon head out into the golden tomorrows—a glowing, sunset paddy near Miryang, South #Korea. They will hunt frogs to sample for species diversity. #EdenWalk
July 10, 2025 at 2:10 PM
APEX BUSINESS MODEL: combo burger-joint-cum-workout-gym in Daegu, South #Korea. #EdenWalk
July 10, 2025 at 2:09 PM
SILENCE OF THE FROGS: South Korea’s natural wetlands are almost gone—not at all good for frogs. Their last bastion in the country: rice fields. Zoologist Jang Yikweon is studying how frogs and humans interact in a world increasingly hostile to amphibians. https://t.co/I9HtfAtYKd
July 10, 2025 at 2:09 PM
After the long letters have been written, read, abandoned,
after distances grow absolute
& speech, too, is distance,
only listening is left.
I have heard the dark hearts of the stones
that beat once in a lifetime. -W. Pitt Root Photo: Crossing the Hindu Kush with Matthieu Paley
July 10, 2025 at 2:09 PM
As the US extorts "rare earths" protection money, mafioso-style, from a bloodstained ally, it's a good time to read—or reread—the best account of the invasion of #Ukraine by #Russia by any reporter, "Our Enemies Will Vanish" by the brilliant @yarotrof.
https://t.co/lOQSLjZCJj
July 10, 2025 at 2:09 PM
Walking partner Lee Junseok consults a digital map to navigate a densely forested stretch of the overgrown Yeongnamdaero, or imperial “Scholars Road” in South #Korea. Centuries before, Joseon Dynasty noblemen traveled the same route en luxe—carried in palanquins.
July 10, 2025 at 2:09 PM
Table excavation: Archeologists Jong Yoon Woo & Hyeong Woo Lee treat @outofedenwalk to a garlic-infused feast in Suyanggae, South #Korea. The region is replete with prehistoric campsites . . . and garlic. #EdenWalk
July 10, 2025 at 2:08 PM