Hiking the Glenn Highway through Alaska. Published in Asphalt Pilgrims.
Paul Salopek
Every hundred miles Salopek pauses to record the landscape and a person he meets, assembling a global snapshot of humankind. Milestones reflect straight-line distances, but his walked distances are generally much longer. More on these waypoints here.
Every hundred miles Salopek pauses to record the landscape and a person he meets, assembling a global snapshot of humankind. Milestones reflect straight-line distances, but his walked distances are generally much longer. More on these waypoints here.
A Milestone with an asterisk.
About 20 months ago, I paused the walk in Mandalay, Myanmar, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Asian borders slammed shut. Then, without warning, Myanmar’s army seized power in a coup, and in the resulting chaos and violence, the walk onward to the border with China was impossible. So I leapfrogged ahead by plane. I restarted the trek in China, as close to the Myanmar border as pandemic rules allowed. This still left a gap of 251 un-walked miles in the journey’s global route.
251 miles of trailside stories unshared. 251 miles of discovery lost. Skipping ahead to China also means that two Milestones—which are logged every 100 miles—are excluded forever from the walk’s global record of life on Earth along the pathways of the ancestors.
Every story contains silences. This is one of them.
A wraparound soundscape at this Milestone
This Milestone’s location on a map
Photos of the ground under Paul’s feet and the sky above at this Milestone
A brief question and answer with the first person Paul meets at this Milestone
Jiang Ji Bing
Part-time flower farmer, age 39
Who are you?
I plant flowers that are used for medicinal purposes. Chrysanthemums of longevity. They’re also used for fertilizer. Business is bad because of COVID. The borders are closed. So I’m doing this as a sideline. It doesn’t pay much anymore.
Where do you come from?
I’m from Tengchong.
Where are you going?
When the flowers are picked, I’m going back home.
A video showing the landscape around this Milestone
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