Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 21/05/2025What a strange thing! to be alive beneath cherry blossoms. ― Kobayashi Issa, 18th century The @outofedenwalk trail begins in #Japan. #EdenWalk 010 1
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 08/05/2025A 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 t.co/9Q9KqAkoYv 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 29/04/2025Walking 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/ 010 1
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 26/04/2025Walking 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 t.co/LmT9x7EABB 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 22/04/2025An 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/ t.co/AjdNZQhkcd 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 15/04/2025MILESTONE #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. t.co/vpmTiC6Kag 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 12/04/2025South 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 t.co/GwRHnuXDXX 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 11/04/2025The @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. outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 09/04/2025What 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 t.co/KMWPVorSbD 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 09/04/2025South #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. t.co/GwRHnuXDXX 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 29/03/2025Avisha 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 t.co/bgPSKz1eag 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 28/03/2025After 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. t.co/Uyo8KaPGMy 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 28/03/2025A 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. 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 24/03/2025‘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 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 22/03/2025Walking 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. 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 21/03/2025It 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. t.co/jmNNRvdLDl 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 18/03/2025Family 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 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 18/03/2025Frog 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 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 15/03/2025Serious 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 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 12/03/2025APEX BUSINESS MODEL: combo burger-joint-cum-workout-gym in Daegu, South #Korea. #EdenWalk 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 11/03/2025SILENCE 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. t.co/I9HtfAtYKd 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 26/02/2025After 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 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 22/02/2025As 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. t.co/lOQSLjZCJj 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 22/02/2025Walking 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. 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 15/02/2025Table 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 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 10/02/2025A “balloon war” erupted last summer between North & South Korea. @outofedenwalk recorded a nighttime launch. South Korean activists floated Bibles, political literature, rice, & US dollars across the Demilitarized Zone. North Korea retaliated with balloons carrying garbage. 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 02/02/2025Gospel of selfishness. www.propublica.org/article/trump-st… 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 01/02/2025Antique and new: A modern bike trails slides past the remnants of the Yeongnamdaero, the 600-year-old ‘Scholar’s Road’ linking Seoul with Busan, South #Korea. #EdenWalk 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 31/01/2025Walking partner Lee Junseok & I put new #Fjallraven packs through the ol’ upside-down test. They passed. I didn’t. Near Busan, South #Korea. #EdenWalk 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 29/01/2025Happy Chinese New Year. A snake year: Shedding their skin, these zodiacal “little dragons” herald rebirth, transformation, and good luck. Photo: a pit viper on the @outofedenwalk trail in South Korea. 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 28/01/2025Toxic beauty. Decades of massive dam-building in South #Korea have disrupted natural river flows. In places, blocked streams shined chartreuse with algal blooms—a sign of stagnant, low-oxygen waters where little could live. #EdenWalk 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 27/01/2025Walking out of #Africa 12 years ago, I sat on a cobbled beach in #Djibouti & stared at an ultramarine horizon that had lured humans for 1000s of years. Now, 27,000 km later, I’ve walked onto a beach in #Asia, & feel the closing of a vast continental door. t.co/EnvJbtfFV2 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 26/01/2025The global @outofedenwalk spans drastic weathers. Tramping through the sodden, 90%-humidity of South #Korea made me long for the mummified desert air of #Saudi Arabia—where I slept cocooned inside a sleeping bag to recapture breath moisture. #EdenWalk 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 24/01/2025Trails like spiderwebs in the Sobaek Mountains of South #Korea. #EdenWalk 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 22/01/2025“Nobody’s got patience for making true cinema anymore,” says Kim Tae-Hwan, 84, owner of the storefront Korea Video Museum in Daegu, South #Korea. Kim’s private camera collection spans more than century of tech. He projects #Elvis hits on old reel-to-reels. #Edenwalk 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 19/01/2025“We mix East and West,” says Sunmi Park, a tea-master who runs workshops on European tea etiquette in the village of Chongdo, South #Korea. Her cottage is a gilded redoubt against the hegemony of coffee: Earl Greys, mallow lemonades, & Royal Albert bone ware. #EdenWalk 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 08/01/2025What do you discover walking 650 km across #SouthKorea? - 100,729 coffee shops. - Wicked little pit vipers. - A giant gold statue of President Harry Truman. - Netted golf driving ranges in each hamlet of more than 4 houses. - A 600-year-old road. t.co/E4aTK4prZd 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 06/01/2025“Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.”―Anne Carson Two women with a dying infant once showed up at my flat in #Tbilisi. The outcome: a lesson in the stubborn bravery of Georgians. t.co/hjVzcaX5fW 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 04/01/2025Meet Lucie McNeil, the voice of @outofedenwalk. Lucie has read hundreds of thousands of words of the walk’s global dispatches with emotional nuance & verve, making our storytelling accessible to the visually impaired, neurodivergent & all audio lovers. 1/ t.co/vS6bSAia4N 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 04/01/2025Walking partner & @InsideNatGeo Explorer Youngrae Kim led a photography workshop in association with the @outofedenwalk art & storytelling exhibition in #Seoul. An environmental photographer, Youngrae’s work on herbal plants is featured in the exhibition. t.co/HoGbN9v0qz 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 03/01/20252024 was the hottest year on record in South Korea. On this day in the Sobaek Mountains: 37 Celsius (100 Fahrenheit) plus 80% humidity. We are trekking through a rapidly changing world. #EdenWalk 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 23/12/2024Walking central #SouthKorea’s farm basket. Walking partner Lee Junseok on the sunstruck 650-km trail between #Seoul & #Busan. #EdenWalk 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 21/12/2024The recently launched @outofedenwalk art & storytelling exhibition in #Seoul will be open through January 5. The work of six artists/walkers is featured in The Willow Art Space at buzzing Gyeongdong vegetable market downtown. A review: v.daum.net/v/20241220174201187 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 21/12/2024Heading to a canine gender reveal party? Near Yeoju, South Korea. #EdenWalk 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 16/12/2024What’s the purpose of #art? Why do we feel compelled to make it? Why do we admire it? Such unanswerable questions pop up often on the @outofedenwalk, where we trek landscapes with local artists. Our latest ‘walking artist’ exhibition is in #Seoul, #Korea. t.co/blC4ELlF6T 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 16/12/2024Leaving #Seoul, South Korea, on bicycle paths. With walking partner Lee Junseok. #EdenWalk 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 13/12/2024Ordinarily, I’d agree. But there’s nothing ordinary in the world when you walk it. #Seoul, South Korea. #EdenWalk 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 08/12/2024Celebrating #art & #democracy in South Korea. The new @outofedenwalk WALKING KOREA art & storytelling exhibition opened at the buzzy Cheongnyangni vegetable market in #Seoul. We showcase artists who ‘walked along’ on the 650-km trail in #Korea—& attend a rally against a coup. 000 0
Paul Salopek @paulsalopek.social · 07/12/2024A new video update from the @outofedenwalk trail by the team at National Geographic-Japan: What ‘sparks’ human exploration? @acehotelkyoto @NatGeo_Asia #EdenWalk youtu.be/TMFfTQoHdB4 000 0
