Out of Eden Into History

I’ve written about Paul Salopek before, but I’m revisiting his epic journey because last month marked a milestone: Paul reached the tenth anniversary of his 24,000 mile walk around the world, and he shared some of the insights he’s gained since he strapped a piece of roller luggage on a camel and started walking Out of Eden.

In the decade since he took his first steps in Ethiopia’s Rift Valley, the reputed site of the Garden of Eden, Paul has walked 13,000 miles through 19 countries — crossing treacherous byways, raging rivers, towering mountains, parched deserts and silky, sodded savannas. He’s written scores of stories, done interviews and podcasts, visited and talked to children in schools near and far, both personally and virtually.

photo by John Stanmeyer

What has emerged from his extraordinary journey is a body of “slow journalism,” the genesis of his walk. After spending years as a globe-trotting correspondent who won two Pulitzer Prizes for the Chicago Tribune, Paul decided to slow down and savor the moment. Placing one foot before another, he’s filed vivid reports on a a range of issues and on other nomads who stalk the globe creating monumental movements often missed in our TikTok world with its mad dash to a fragile future.

“Nearly a billion restless people, the UN says, are ricocheting today between and within the world’s national borders. This represents the largest mass migration, forced or voluntary, in the 300,000-year story of our species,” he writes in a National Geographic story to memorialize the anniversary.

“History — as scribbled by smug homebodies — often assigns these wandering souls a glib label: losers. But that’s only because agriculture tamed the wild and wooly world of 12,000 years ago, pinning all human achievement to toiling for one’s bread at a fixed patch of earth. Ever since, our sisters and brothers who roam the landscape have been deemed marginal characters, a second-class people: Migrants are dismissed as too weak, feared as too dangerous, or scorned as too backward or competitive to be trusted.

After walking with the world’s outcasts and witnessing the bigotry, exploitation and indifference routinely heaped upon them, Salopek emerges with a different take on migrants and refugees.

“From (my) highly privileged rambling in the wake of our shared Stone Age ancestors” Salopek says, “Migration is a solution, not the problem. And neo-nomadism is looking increasingly like the strategy of winners. He walks among those who leave hearth and home, often with families in tow, to place extraordinary bets on a better life over the horizon.

“In Ethiopia’s desert,” he writes, “I walked alongside columns of climate refugees fleeing parched farms in the Horn of Africa. Most were bound for the Middle East to rent out their muscles as laborers. In Jordan, I camped with dazed survivors from the slaughterhouse of Syria who clung to life in donated tents. Traversing northern India, I wandered among the multitudes of ambitious young Punjabis studying English to pass Canada’s visa requirements. More recently, in hyper-urbanizing China, I’ve even encountered a counter migration of young professionals who, wore out by the frenzy of city life, are trickling back into China’s emptied rural landscapes.”

Think about that. Imagine the guts, ambition and faith of people who head off, usually nearly penniless, for a better life, often only with the clothes on their backs. They overcome hostile borders, callous bureaucracies, menacing militaries, threatening weather and bone-crushing fatigue simply to improve their life.

Of course, not everyone can simply walk away from trouble and misfortune. Migration isn’t always good, either. “Rust belt cities in Jilin, China, and Michigan in the U.S.,” Salopek says, “can truly be revitalized only with the deep local knowledge of their longtime natives.”

But those who can flee desperation often do. Applying Salopek’s reporting to the record number of migrants knocking on America’s doors, I wonder if the migrants who walk to our southern border from Central America are really the kind of humans that an America short of labor wants to summarily reject?

In his “slow journalism”, Salopek weaves a narrative that goes beyond the trials and troubles of those on the move. He also documents how the homes they fled flash warning signals to the world’s citizenry. “In eastern Turkey,” he writes, “I stumbled across 700 miles of wheat and tomato furrows north to the Caucasus. These oldest field are now tallied among the 25 to 30 percent of the world’s farmlands depleting acutely from overuse. What happens when such Neolithic bonanzas of soil fertility play out? Do we really expect millions of local farmers to stay put? And what about the millions they no longer feed?”

In Afghanistan, he met villagers thrilled by a windfall from the climate crisis: “Local creeks were swollen with runoff from irreversibly shrinking glaciers Apricot orchards were thriving. But in 20 years or less, the beautiful alpine region will be drier than ever, and likely be a depopulated ghostland.”

Salopek has about 11,000 miles to go before he walks down the west coasts of the Americas and follows the footsteps of our ancestors to Tiera del Fuego, the tip of South America, where he will become the first man to walk around the world. His feat as an explorer and journalist will become part of history. I’ve been part of his walk since the beginning. So can you if you want. Check out how here. Meanwhile, Paul has some advice for you:

“Keep some bags packed, folks. Don’t be lulled into complacency by the seeming permanence of ‘home’ — our cities, temples, markets and farms. The world is up-shifting into accelerated change mode. So don’t be afraid to move along with it. Mobility is humankind’s oldest and most powerful survival tool.”

—James O’Shea