2024 Fundraising Campaign - Out of Eden Walk

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A MESSAGE FROM THE TRAIL

After 12 years of walking steadily towards sunrise out of Africa, Out of Eden Walk is at last poised to step out of Asia, steam across the North Pacific by cargo ship, and set off on its final, slow pivot south to our immensely long journey’s finish line—the icy tip of South of America at Tierra del Fuego.

As ever, we need your muscle to help us complete this next stage of our storytelling trek.

Rather than peg the annual crowdfunding drive for our nonprofit to a specific geographical region, this year we chose to focus on Out of Eden Walk’s core mission: connecting humanity. True, your kind donations will continue to assist us in hunting and gathering stories of the ordinary people we encounter along our trail—in this case, the diverse inhabitants of the tundra, boreal forests, and chilly cities of North America who are grappling with drastically shifting climates, rapid ecosystem change, growing competition for resources among Arctic nations, and the endurance of vulnerable Indigenous cultures. We also will seek out, as ever, solutions to shared global problems by publishing engaging stories of homegrown innovators. And we will collaborate with local journalists, farmers, photographers, writers, artists, scientists, fishers, and original thinkers, inviting many to walk along and weave their own lively tales into the vast and kaleidoscopic braid of Out of Eden Walk narratives.

But exploring the complexity of human connectedness via the telescope—or is it the microscope?—of “slow journalism” seems more vital a task than ever in our age of global uncertainty, throwback conflicts, profound technological disruption, and troubling political polarization. It is our generation’s lot to live in consequential times. And in an interdependent world, whether we know it or not, we increasingly confront decisions that impact lives far beyond our own households, to shape the wellbeing of our neighbors and, indeed, strangers living continents away.

Learning journeys for all ages. Photos by Paul Salopek, 2024.

Out of Eden Walk’s motto has always been, “People are our destination.” That’s why our nonprofit asks for your support today. Help grow the footprint of a project that not only fosters understanding across human divides, but emphasizes practical outcomes as well: educational collaboration with schools and campuses along our North American walking route, and a workshop program that provides, for free, the powerful tools of immersive reportage to young media workers and students.

Thank you for walking with us.

– Paul Salopek

COMMUNITY APPRECIATION

FOR EVERYONE: In recognition of your contributions, we are assigning every donor’s name to a mile on the Out of Eden Walk Donor Map. This digital map of supporters will remain a permanent legacy of the journey. See the Out of Eden Walk Donor Map here.

In addition, you can choose to receive semi-monthly newsletters we create just for you, the Out of Eden Walk community, featuring notifications when new stories are published and other special content and updates from the trail.

SPECIAL: *ACT FAST, LIMITED TO 200.* With a donation of $200 or more, you will receive your Donor Map mile name plus a special bonus: a handwritten postcard bought and signed by Paul along the Out of Eden Walk trail. Please note that this reward is limited to the first 200 people to donate $200 or more. We will contact you once the campaign is complete to request information for fulfilling your rewards, including a valid mailing address where we can send your postcard. **We’ll update this page once the reward is no longer available.**

Other donation options: In addition to the “Donate” button at the top of this page, which provides the option to donate online or send a check through the mail, you can contribute through a Donor Advised Fund.

Donate through a Donor Advised Fund: Donations can be made via mailed check through a Donor Advised Fund (DAF). If you have an account with Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable, BNY Mellon or Greater Kansas City Community Foundation, or other DAFs, please access this DAF Direct link to make a gift from your account. The link provided is for convenience only, and is not an endorsement of either the linked-to entities or any products or services.

WHY WE FUNDRAISE

Out of Eden Walk is an IRS-certified 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Out of Eden Walk is only partially funded by partners. Public donations are necessary not only to keep Paul and local Walking Partners on the trail, but also to support integral impact programs—from amplifying local voices, to innovative education resource building, to the eternal preservation of the Walk’s photograph, audio, video, and text archive, and much more. 100% of funds raised go toward fulfilling our mission to connect people across borders through the power of storytelling.

- - - - Walking Partners Murat Yazar and Kirkatir—a Turkish name meaning “gray mule.”
        
        WHERE YOUR DONATIONS GO
        
        Out of Eden Walk “Slow Journalism” Workshops
        
        In this Out of Eden Walk workshop series, a group of 25-30 early- to mid-career journalists specializing in stories about the environment, culture, social justice, business, and politics receive training in the art and practice of slow journalism, which expands their professional horizons and opens new lines of potential storytelling—important to any journalist seeking to know and write about what’s happening in the lives of ordinary people in the communities they cover. Past workshop collaborators include the Asian College of Journalism, NYU-Shanghai, the Forestry and Grasslands Administration in China, and National Geographic Society. We’ve conducted workshops in India (Delhi, Kolkata, and Chennai), China (Shanghai, Shenyang), and are planning future workshops on the route ahead in Japan and North America.
        
        Out of Eden Walk Art and Storytelling Exhibitions
        
        The inaugural Out of Eden Walk museum exhibition opened at the Institute for Contemporary Arts in Shanghai, China. It featured the work of over a dozen artists and impacted tens of thousands of local visitors and workshop participants throughout its three-month duration, spreading awareness about the project and inviting citizens to experience a 6,000-kilometer foot traverse across China. Titled “Walked China: Stories Yet to be Told,” the multimedia show was conceived to highlight the diversity of local cultures by presenting stories that roam widely across disciplines and knowledge systems and reflect on how walking changes perceptions of time and being. These themes, including how we might approach encounters with unfamiliar cultures and indigenous knowledges as starting points for dialogue, serve to inform the next museum partnership: Out of Eden Walk is collaborating with the curator Sooyoung Leam in South Korea on a “Walked Korea” art show that will debut in the WilloW Gallery in Seoul in December 2024. Derived from research conducted during the Korea chapter of the Out of Eden Walk, this exhibition will bring together pieces from artists who have ventured into the field as well as contributors encountered along the road. The exhibition will seek to generate open-ended dialogue on walking as an alternative approach to listening and storytelling, and can be complemented with various discursive programs. In partnership with local and global individuals and institutions, the Out of Eden Walk nonprofit will helm more in-country museum collaborations with public support in future communities along the forward trail once a year.
        
        Left: “Forever Walk” Out of Eden Walk exhibition at NYU-Shanghai’s Institute for Contemporary Arts, May-August 2023. Right: “Walking Korea Cut Pieces” exhibition, which will debut in December 2024.
        
        Out of Eden Walk Community Storytelling – HomeStories
        
        HomeStories is a crowd-sourced storytelling map that unifies a multitude of voices in conversation about a common theme—where on Earth we call “home,” and why. (Watch a 5-min intro video to HomeStories here.) In this digital commons, participants publish brief narratives describing their experiences of “home.” If they choose, they can include a photo of themselves and can answer the same three Milestone questions Paul asks people he meets every hundred miles along his global route: Who are you? Where are you from? Where are you going? Each post is pinned to the location the author is describing, creating a unified, geotagged archive of individual narratives. Launched in 2017 in partnership with Esri and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, HomeStories sparked interest from the Out of Eden Walk’s global community, with many followers asking how they could participate. Educators in the United States and other countries wanted to bring HomeStories to their classrooms and community members in various locales wanted to add their stories and to share the map with family members and friends. In keeping with the spirit of Paul’s multi-country storytelling journey, the map invites anyone, anywhere in the world to tell their own story. Already, thousands of people from dozens of countries representing every continent have added their voices, and a committed team of 25 volunteers from diverse locales including the United States, India, Italy, Zambia, and the Canary Islands are signed up to act as Story Gatherers—ambassadors of the Out of Eden Walk amplifying program awareness and engagement through storytelling.
        Out of Eden Walk HomeStories: Global view on the left, individual stories on the right.
        
        Equipment: With almost twelve years of walking under his belt, Paul has honed the art of packing light. But the demands of being a writer on the move include keeping up with a fast-paced publishing schedule, often in “unwired” areas with limited or nonexistent Internet and mobile connectivity. This can mean expensive satellite phone charges, as well as periodic laptop, sound recorder, and phone replacement.
        
        Travel Essentials: These include basics such as food, water, lightweight camping equipment and foul-weather gear. Paul and Walking Partners travel with pack animals—such as camels, horses or mules—when the terrain demands; these four-legged walking partners are costly, but necessary.
        
        Home Base: Our small headquarters in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, handles behind-the-scenes support to keep the walk moving. The core team manages educational coordination, audience outreach, fundraising, financial management, international communications, and back-end logistical support for Paul and his Walking Partners.
        
        Walking Partners: Walking Partners are crucial creative collaborators along the Out of Eden Walk journey. They are compass holders; they help design and, often, dictate the routing through their native lands; they act as translators and interpreters; and, most importantly, they bring personal and in-depth cultural perspectives of the peoples and landscapes through which they walk with Paul. Walking Partners are paid an above-standard wage for their key roles, and often spend several months on the trail.
        
        Connected by Out of Eden Walk HomeStories, students in Chicago perform a musical response to a song sent by Ukrainian students.
        
        ACTIVITIES AND ACHIEVEMENTS
        
        Over the past twelve years, with you and our partners, Out of Eden Walk has:
        
        Published Out of Eden Walk editorial content for an audience of at least 45 million readers worldwide: 500+ dispatches published on topics ranging from climate change to mass migration, archaeology to technology, cultural survival to human evolution; 100+ “guest dispatches” by Walking Partners; 12 feature stories in National Geographic Magazine (with three cover stories), for a growing multimedia collection of 480,000 published words, 1,800 photos, and 300 videos, with texts translated into 34 languages. (Our archive of translated stories can be found here.)
        
        Since 2013, Paul Salopek has covered 19 countries and 25,000 kilometers. From 2021-2023, Out of Eden Walk shared stories from an historic, 6,000-km trek across China, where Shanghai Media Group’s docuseries reached over 800 million viewers on China’s domestic television channels and streaming platforms. He has crossed into South Korea from China and is continuing westward through Japan before reaching North America by cargo ship in 2025.
        
        Bridging continents, one GPS tick at a time.
        
        Partnered with PRI’s The World Radio Program—“a public radio program and podcast that crosses borders and time zones to bring home the stories that matter”—on a bespoke Out of Eden Walk-themed interview series, in which Paul Salopek speaks about global issues through the lens of the Walk. The series airs every two weeks, with 22 segments published thus far.
        
        Launched the Out of Eden Walk “Slow Journalism” workshop series with 100+ participants that generated multimedia reportage for national outlets that reached an audience of 25 million people in India alone; conducted four storytelling workshops with local partner organizations and engaged hundreds of participants in academic and professional development settings in China.
        
        Built an innovative cross-cultural education hub that has enrolled 35,000 primary and secondary level students in 61 countries.
        
        Provided training to more than 1,100 university-level professors across disciplines (not just journalism, but anthropology, geography, and history) in the United States.
        
        Created a community storytelling program, “HomeStories,” which is now in use by a global audience of some 2,000 students, community leaders, and lifelong learners, who are participating in all seven continents.
        
        Inspired the creation of a fellowship curator position and museum exhibition of “Walking China,” featuring the creative work of local Walking Partners, which opened in May 2023 at NYU-Shanghai’s internationally-acclaimed Institute of Contemporary Arts. The exhibition had over 3,000 visitors in a three-month period.
        
        Collaborated with National Geographic Society to amplify the voices of Walking Partners on a podcast “Love, Hate, and the Weather.” The inaugural pilot episode, featuring Walking Partners from India, won a prestigious Signal award in the Documentary category.
        
        Engaged a committed community on social media platforms with over 240,000 combined followers, with whom we share our unique stories and visual content and highlight the incredible work of our partners.
        
        Executed an initiative to make available twelve years and 480,000 words of OOEW storytelling in audio format. This long-awaited and important evolution—to include audio versions of our dispatch offerings—will continue as we move forward. Listen along with the journey here.
        
        With your support, Out of Eden Walk will:
        
        Elevate the work of creative local Walking Partners along the project’s route through our nonprofit programs in education, workshop trainings, community storytelling, cross-cultural dialogues, and museum exhibitions and events.
        
        Co-curate a “Walked Korea” museum exhibition, which opens with a reception and panel discussion in Seoul, Korea, on December 8th, 2024. This multimedia show features the work of established and emerging South Korean painters, sculptors, photographers, videographers, cartoonists, and conceptual artists who joined Out of Eden Walk to reinterpret their homeland on foot, through topics as diverse as exile, the body, migration, gender, and Otherness. The exhibition is curated by noted South Korean art scholar Sooyoung Leam and is being hosted by the brand-new Willow Art Space, located in the vibrant Cheongnyangni vegetable market in downtown Seoul. Thanks exclusively to public support, Out of Eden Walk museum collaborations will highlight the voices of local artists in each country along the forward route.
        
        Paul Salopek and contributing artists to the “Walked Korea Cut Pieces” exhibition.
        
        Join NatGeo Japan’s “The Spark” Lecture series as a featured speaker with Walking Partner Soichiro Koriyama for an in-person public lecture at Kyoto’s Ace Hotel and an online panel that will be shared on NatGeo Japan TV YouTube account. Public talks are a cornerstone of Out of Eden Walk, and Paul Salopek and Walking Partners will collaborate with partner organizations and hosts in forward locations along the global trail.
        
        Open two new chapters of storytelling: “Middle Kingdom,” or Chapter Six in our long project’s records, ended when Paul finished walking across China. Now, Out of Eden Walk is covering the last segment of the walk in Asia with “Asian Rim,” Chapter Seven, which will delve into environmental change, socioeconomic trends, and oft-hidden histories surfaced along a trek from South Korea to Japan. In 2025, Out of Eden Walk will enter North America via Alaska en route to the project’s anticipated end point, Tierra del Fuego.
        
        Revamp “HomeStories” in collaboration with Esri to facilitate better quality for student and teacher participants. This tech update is essential for Out of Eden Walk’s mission to share a practical application for “slow storytelling” and improve understanding across real and invisible borders. With the achievement of a tech update, educators involved with HomeStories will develop additional curricular resources.
        “Out of Eden Walk is the only resource that I have consistently used every year for the last 11 years of teaching. Thank you for always providing relevant, thought provoking articles, photos, maps and sometimes video clips too! Since the inception of the Home Stories project, I have also asked my students to tell their stories of home. This is the 3rd year in a row that my students and our virtual exchange partners in Lubny, Ukraine have shared our stories of home.“ – Anne-Michele Boyle, M.B.A., M.Ed.
        
        Reach a multitude of new readers by growing the core group of dispatch content Local Language Edition co-publishers. Current LLE partners are: National Geographic Portugal, National Geographic Spain, National Geographic Japan, National Geographic Italy, National Geographic France, and National Geographic Poland.
        
        Publish more storytelling maps in collaboration with Esri. In 2024, our “Ancient Roads of China” map highlighted the historic byways Paul Salopek and walking partners trekked through China. Educators especially love these intricate, immersive map stories as a learning resource that stokes curiosity and inspiration for students of all ages.
        
        Build out the Out of Eden Walk audio offerings: in partnership with National Geographic Society and Lucie McNeil, we are undertaking an important effort to preserve, diversify and more equitably share the growing archive of Out of Eden Walk’s written storytelling. All dispatches are now available in the oldest form of storytelling—the spoken word—in audio format, beginning with the very first stories in Africa in 2013. We’ll continue publishing these professional, high-quality audio story batches on a quarterly basis so listeners can follow along.
        
        Engage with local educators, documentary filmmakers, media workers, and other thought leaders to spread the Walk’s mission of fostering connectivity across borders through the power of people-to-people storytelling.
        
        WHO WE ARE
        
        New to the Walk? Welcome! Out of Eden Walk is an IRS-classified tax exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Over the past twelve years, the project has spanned two continents on foot—some 25,000 kilometers miles so far—following the pathways of the greatest human exploration ever undertaken: the original Stone Age discovery of our shared home, planet Earth.
        
        Why walk?
        
        Because by slowing down our lives to a more human pace, we bring to light the vital connections among people and the natural world that are missed by moving too fast—insights that can help guide us through a challenging new century of climate crises, income inequality, and conflict.
        
        Because in an age of shallow media that often polarizes and divides, our deepening trove of cross-cultural ‘slow storytelling’ offers audiences a more humane, meaningful, and inclusive alternative to today’s angry narratives of nativism, intolerance, and xenophobia.
        
        Because walking reawakens wonder. And wonder is what unites us: We are building a storytelling community across borders that shares its own rediscovery of the Earth at three miles per hour.
        
        A veteran writer and multimedia storyteller, Paul Salopek has worked around the world for publications such as the Chicago Tribune and National Geographic, among others. But Paul felt that “fast news” left an unfilled and increasingly perilous void in the international media landscape: The relentless 24/7 news cycle often simplified complex stories, and emphasized an artificial separation and isolation in human affairs. So in 2013, Paul set off from Herto Bouri, Ethiopia—a “cradle of humankind”—with a novel solution in mind: To walk through the stories of our time rather than fly, drive or otherwise speed through them.
        
        Having started out a solo rambling storyteller, his Walk has blossomed into a diverse global network of fellow storytellers, all bound together by a shared idea: A medley of media professionals, educators, scientists, artists, who wish to foster cross-cultural connections and promote immersive storytelling via people-to-people narratives of connectivity.Through our growing archive of multimedia reportage (480,000 words, tens of thousands of photos, hundreds of videos, and growing); professional media workshops, museum exhibitions highlighting the work of local creatives, crowd-sourced storytelling initiatives, global classroom interactions and specialized curricula, one-on-one mentoring, and this donor community, Paul and the small team of Out of Eden Walk partners and educators are building an enduring community of fellow storytellers of all ages. Already, millions of readers and tens of thousands of students are “walking along” with the project online.
        
        Together, we will carry on the project’s philosophy of slowing down to tell complex stories of our time, delving beneath the usual shallow headlines, and sharing the human experience with wonder and empathy.
        
        Farmer’s bounty. Photo by Paul Salopek.
        
        In readers’ words:
        
        “I have been following you way back, since 2019. You inspire me to want to bring my ideas/projects to life.”
        
        “Every update from this project over the years never ceases to excite! Safe travels and I look forward to seeing/reading about insights from the next leg of the journey through South Korea!”
        
        “Takes us out of our everyday worlds and out into the everyday worlds and time of others past and present – enriches us all. Thank you.”
        
        COALITION
        
        The Out of Eden Walk Coalition is a caravan of institutions and individuals who bring credibility and global reach to an alliance that entwines the fields of journalism, education, digital mapping, and storytelling.
        
        We are proud to partner with the Veditum Foundation, a nonprofit research, media and action organization based out of Kolkata, India, that supports the work of creatives and scientists relating to India’s waterways and river ecosystems. In 2024, Veditum led a new fellowship program, Moving Upstream: Luni Fellowship: The Fellowship program is an extension of the Moving Upstream project series by Veditum, and attempts to bring new perspectives through which we can look at India’s river ecosystems and the life of riparian communities.
        
        “We’re proud to have the Out of Eden Walk as our partners in our fellowship programme. It has been our founding endeavour to create opportunities for young Indians to experience the country at the grassroots. We’ve successfully completed 3 iterations of our fellowship programme – along Rivers Betwa, Sindh and Luni.” – Veditum.
        
        The Coalition organizations share knowledge, showcase worthy projects, offer mentorship opportunities, and have access to a network of international expertise to develop and promote the philosophy of slow journalism. Partners include:
        
        National Geographic Society
        
        Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
        
        Project Zero
        
        Veditum India
        
        Abundance Foundation
        
        Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard
        
        Robert R. McCormick Foundation
        
        National Museum of Georgia
        
        John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
        
        New York University Shanghai
        
        NYU-Shanghai Institute of Contemporary Arts
        
        Nieman Foundation
        
        Esri
        
        We are grateful to our thought partners for championing Out of Eden Walk’s philosophy and mission and for their multifaceted support of the project. If you represent an organization that may be interested in joining the Out of Eden Walk Coalition, please contact us via www.outofedenwalknonprofit.org.
        
        OUT OF EDEN WALK: EDUCATION PARTNERS
        
        Open Canopy, previously Out of Eden Learn, is a free educational community designed and managed by our partners at Project Zero. The Open Canopy team engages 70,000 students from 70 countries on their Out of Eden Walk-inspired platform, an award-winning education resource that teaches media literacy and other critical skills through “learning journeys.” In 2024, the Open Canopy team published “The Open Canopy Handbook,” an educator’s guide that offers an approach to teaching and learning that encourages young people to slow down and observe the world closely, share stories and perspectives with one another, and make connections between their own lives and bigger human stories. Are you an educator interested in joining the Out of Eden Learn community? Find out more and sign up here: https://learn.outofedenwalk.com.
        
        “In this learning journey, I was able to learn much more about migration and in this process, listen to stories of immigrant families, opinions about borders, personal comments and curious facts about other cultures. It was a fascinating journey that also led me to know more about my own family. I think it’s great that despite being so far away we can feel these stories so close. There were always migrations and many families had to experience the same over the years.” – Student comment, Out of Eden Learn.
        
        Our partners at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting connect students and teachers from elementary through university levels with Out of Eden Walk, providing access to free lesson plans and educational curricula for Out of Eden Walk-themed modules. Past resources include examining big topics in short videos, available on YouTube. Pulitzer Center continues to provide expert collaboration on curricular materials and awareness-building for Out of Eden Walk education, and Pulitzer Center has collaborated with Out of Eden Walk in support of specialized summer programming for grade-level students and Out of Eden Walk’s University Outreach program.
        
        Out of Eden Walk engages with classrooms in a series of online talks with Paul curated by National Geographic Society Education. National Geographic also offers education videos and other Out of Eden Walk-inspired classroom activities in their Resource Library. National Geographic Education regularly coordinates “Explorer Classroom” sessions—live digital interactions in which students can speak with Paul from his trail locations and ask him questions. Thousands of students have joined twelve Explorer Classroom hangouts with Paul to date.
        
        Explorer Classroom
        
        Definitions In the Field – Trade
        
        Definitions In the Field – Diaspora
        
        Mapping the Human Journey and Human Migrations
        
        Definitions In the Field – Rural
        
        An Esri StoryMap of the Silk Road
        
        Out of Eden Walk’s University Outreach program—led by journalist, professor, and writer Don Belt—used HomeStories in a summer course for two dozen NYU Shanghai students based on the principles of slow storytelling and the Out of Eden Walk. During the workshop, along with weekly lectures and assigned reading, students practiced exploratory, neighborhood-based eyewitness reporting and captured the essence of their hometowns in digital multimedia narratives. The course taught NYU Shanghai’s Chinese students to walk slowly, look deeply, and view their home environments from a new perspective, through the eyes of a global storyteller.
        
        MAPPING
        
        With chief cartographer Jeff Blossom from the Harvard Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA), Out of Eden Walk produces interactive storytelling maps that take viewers through regions and cities along the Out of Eden Walk Trail. Jeff collaborates with partners along the Out of Eden Walk route to teach mapping and its relationship to meaningful, data-based storytelling. Jeff also directs Out of Eden Walk’s carto-education program, teaching webinars and conducting in-person school and professional development events, to equip all-level students with GIS design and literacy development.
        
        Interactive storytelling maps provide in-depth, immersive experience of urban and rural locales along the Out of Eden Walk route—and an introduction to the people who inhabit them.
        
        Walking Kolkata
        
        Walking Yangon
        
        Kinks Map
        
        Milestone Map of Faces
        
        Walking Baku
        
        Walking Tbilisi
        
        Walking Jerusalem
        
        Walking Jeddah
        
        “The River Roads of India,” produced in partnership with Esri, is a special immersive story map that takes viewers through The Indus, The Ganges, and The Brahmaputra waterways, examining a looming water crisis with photo, video, and narrative content documented on the Out of Eden Walk.
        
        “Walking China’s Antique Roads,” produced in partnership with Esri, is a special immersive story map that takes viewers through the ancient byways that Paul and his Walking Partners retraced on the 6,000-kilometer walk across the Middle Kingdom.
        
        MEDIA AND NEWS
        
        PBS NewsHour has featured Out of Eden Walk eight times, NPR Morning Edition has featured Out of Eden Walk five times, and over 60 prestigious news organizations worldwide have covered Out of Eden Walk, including CNN International, Amanpour & Co., The New York Times, WBEZ, the BBC, GQ, VICE, and the CBC. In addition, almost 800 Out of Eden Walk articles have been translated by more than 290 volunteers in 34 different languages.
        
        Out of Eden Walk’s 12th feature story in National Geographic Magazine was published in the September 2024 issue. This is the longest-running series of print coverage in the Magazine’s 131-year history. Our 13th story in National Geographic Magazine will be published in 2025.
        
        Content snapshot: What is a Milestone? Every 100 miles of the journey, Paul records a short video, photographs of land and sky, and three-question interview with the nearest human. We call these brief snapshots of life across a walked world “Milestones.” Enjoy this 50 second video video from Milestone 94, “Only We Were Outside.”
        
        WALKING ALONG
        
        The Out of Eden Walk community of readers and followers continues to grow. We share the joys of a world rediscovered on foot in multimedia glimpses of the journey and highlight the amazing work of our collaborators and Walking Partners on: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, Soundcloud, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Our newsletter notifies you whenever a new dispatch is published and keeps you informed about community news, events, trail updates, and more. Together, these channels share the Walk’s thoughtful, meaning-centric content with hundreds of thousands of people from all around the world who are eager to find deeper ways to engage online.
        
        Corn harvests dry beside rural roads in Liaoning Province, once home to artist Han Qian’s grandparents before they moved, like millions of other Chinese, to industrial centers in the 20th century. Photo by Paul Salopek.
        
        Follow Out of Eden Walk on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Facebook and sign up for our newsletter to receive news and updates from the trail.
        
        SOCIAL MEDIA SPOTLIGHT
        
        The rainy weather couldn’t keep us from taking our first slow walk like @PaulSalopek – we used our senses to notice so many things as we walked around our school! @OutofEdenLearn #Inquirers #Communicators #WhoWeAre #FunInFirst #FirstGradeRocks @RandolphIBStars pic.twitter.com/HerSX2SuPs
        
        — Erin Kowalevicz, NBCT (@MrsKowalevicz) October 3, 2024
        
        As some pathways fade, others become apparent. Obstacles and gaps are part of any story. Originally, @outofedenwalk planned to cross from #China into #Siberia. But the Russian route is too fraught. At least for now. So, new trails unspool in #SouthKorea and #Japan. #EdenWalk pic.twitter.com/PbSYznZrCj
        
        — Paul Salopek (@PaulSalopek) October 2, 2024
        
        THANK YOU FOR JOINING THE JOURNEY!
        
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