This week I got to learn and explore more about The Out of Eden Walk on the National Geographic website. This walk followed a gentleman named Paul Salopek, who is a fifty nine year old writer and journalist, across the world on a 21,000 mile walk. This walk took around a decade to complete.  While Salopek is on this expedition, he reports all of his experiences and the stories along the way for people to hear. Salopek also checks in every one hundred miles to give updates on his voyage. This blog is to talk about and mention some of my favorite or most memorable moments from the journey thus far.

Milestone 7: Red Sea

This Milestone I found to be very interesting, it was towards the beginning of the voyage, but not the start of it. This was day one hundred and eight and mile six hundred. The view from the camera, which is pictured below seems to be a boat in the middle of the sea. As mentioned in the milestone 7 information “The crew was Somali, Palestinian, Egyptian, Yemeni, Djiboutian — a Red Sea stew — but the officers and cook were Syrian. All the Syrians were neighbors from Tartus, a port that was old when the Knights Templar took it in 1152 and then lost it again to Saladin”. This showed what his life was like and what he happened to see while there. I found this mile marker to be interesting because of how simple it was, there wasn’t too much going on, but it was enough to keep this journey continuing, especially so soon after hitting the one hundred day mark.

Milestone 18: Displaced

This milestone was one that stuck out to me before even doing research about Paul Salopek and his The Out of Eden walk. This milestone as day three hundred and sixty six as well as mile marker 1700. The elevation here was -1157. The main reason as to why this milestone stuck out to me was that it was the closest one to a year. In this moment he just traveled for a year and one day, this is a huge accomplishment. During this moment in Salopek’s journey he saw tents that look like white mushrooms in the fields. He mentioned what everyone was doing and how it seemed very familiar to the place he saw before. He said it was his first rain in a year which is so crazy to think about.

Milestone 60: The Teacher

The last milestone that really caught my eye was milestone 60. This was day 2050 and mile 5,900 of the journey. The elevation was at 627 feet. I think that this milestone was extremely important to document since it showed all of the hardships that they had to go through. The day was gloomy and crummy. They had to spend the night in rooms that were very similar to prison cells, and they lost their donkey to a fever. It seemed like all hope was lost and things kept getting worse and worse. This is a great lesson to show every one that it is important to keep going and to not give up even when it seems as though there is no hope.

Overall, I think that The Out of Eden walk is educational and important for students to hear in classrooms. I think there are a lot of opportunities to educate students on how to travel as well as have open conversations about everything that happens on the journey. This is a great time to talk about all the ups and downs of a trip as well as the different cultures, climate, and more about all the places that Paul Salopek traveled.

Thank you for reading my blog, make sure to check out my twitter page to see more updates from me. My twitter handle is @laurennwhaley13