This week I visited the Out of Eden Walk. This was a particularly fun assignment and I found it extremely informative and interesting. While exploring this site, I decided to visit different places and milestones and read more about them. Specifically, in Chapter 3: Autumn Wars, found on the main page, I first explored Milestone 32: Dry Well. This milestone location was right on the coast of the Caspian Sea. It was a vast, open land covered in tiny shrubs with reddish dirt. During this stop, they encountered a Gobustan native, the location of this journey. His name is Ilham Eyvazov, a 54 year old taxi driver who comes from a family of hard workers. He was once a fireman before he started driving taxis. I think that the explorers to add in personal encounters makes this so much more wholesome and gives a better idea on how the people are like and what their lives are like.
The next milestone I explored was Milestone 33: Night Crossing. This gave me a more broad look on their journey because the first stop I looked at was during the day and this one was during the night to explore a ship in the middle of the Caspian Sea. “The cargo ship was the MV Fikret Emirov, named after an Azeri composer of the Soviet period. The sea was five million and a half years old and it expanded and contracted through the ages with the changes in climate.” This was a very interesting one to explore because the panoramic view that is provided gives off an eerie sense because of the dark and basically empty ship. The explorer, Paul Salopek, even said that there were not human encounters within a 6 mile radius and therefore, was not able to include an interaction they had for this milestone. The image they included of the sky on this stop was pitch black.
Here is a link to further explore this Milestone!
Lastly, Milestone 34: Adrift. This was probably the most beautiful one I explored during this assignment. The panoramic view that they gave was absolutely breathtaking and displayed a sunset over the sea. I wanted to share exactly how Salopek described this particular milestone because it was amazingly written and provides the best sense of imagination and story-like aspect. “The ferry across the Caspian Sea carried 28 big-rig trucks from Azerbaijan to Kazakhstan. A modern seaborne link in the old Silk Road. The crew of Azeris and Russians were unfriendly. The Turkish truckers locked themselves in their trucks or cabins for the night passage. A ghost ship. Empty. Seemingly adrift. Or so I thought. In the early morning the mess room was trashed: empty whiskey bottles, overflowing ashtrays, broken glasses rocking with the swell across tabletops. The tough peroxide Russian steward came in. She kicked the sleeping truckers off the tables, off the benches. I’d missed something.” This leaves me with the biggest sense of mystery, but made it all the more interesting.
I loved reading about Paul Salopek’s adventures on this Out of Eden Walk. This is such a different and intricate website that an educator can use to further explore areas in the classroom.