OUT OF EDEN WALK

As many readers know, one of the unique storytelling features of the Out of Eden Walk is Milestones: standardized recordings I take every hundred miles across the surface of the globe. Like beads strung on a necklace, these systematic stops along the trail will offer micro-snapshots of life on Earth across four continents.

I have logged 28 such narrative pauses so far. None are pre-planned. They simply occur whenever the distance logged on my GPS—as measured in air miles from my last Milestone—ticks over from 99.99 to 100.00. To date, the walk’s Milestones have cropped up in the middle of empty Saudi Arabian deserts, at dog-eared gas stations in the West Bank, next to a rainy refugee camp in Jordan, and inside the pimped-out cabin of a camel boat steaming across the Red Sea. At each geo-coded location, I photograph a panorama of the horizon, snap a picture of the sky and ground, record audio and video, and interview the nearest human being with three set questions relating to human identity.

From the walk’s start in Ethiopia two years ago, the Milestones and other experimental journalism from this project have been housed on an independent Web site at www.outofedenwalk.com. But starting later this year, much of that content—narrative maps, guest blogs, lab-talk/education efforts, dispatch translations, volunteer opportunities—will be integrated with these written dispatches on a new and entirely reimagined site hosted by National Geographic. This grand merger is made possible by a generous grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. It will create a deeper, richer, more rewarding walk experience online. And best of all, our readers will be able to interact more closely with each other as we grow the walk’s global community.

I set out again in late summer for Azerbaijan, and Milestones will later appear on the new holistic walk page. From then on, it’ll be one step, one Web site, and one world at a time.