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.
Climbing up through mixed forests and high pastures, we were hiking around Jade Dragon Snow Mountain—a jutting, 18,300-foot, snowcapped deity to various local ethnic minorities in western Yunnan Province—when we came upon a microscopic outpost called Runanguo.
The most amazing thing about Runanguo wasn’t its isolation: It was as geographically remote as a moon base. It was the extraordinary efforts that had been poured into connecting the hamlet to the rest of the world: new concrete roads, power lines, and fast-Internet mobile phone towers. All for maybe 10 houses inhabited by ethnic Yi people and a few dozen cows.
But roads run both ways. And most of the young had abandoned high, lonely Runanguo anyways, to work in cities. It was a well-connected ghost village. There wasn’t a resident left under 50. The most traffic in years arrived with the Out of Eden Walk, a Chinese documentary film crew in tow.
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
Lu Wan Jiang
Forest guard, age 59
Who are you?
I’m a forest guard and a village head and a member of the Communist Party.
Where do you come from?
I was born in this village where you’re standing.
Where are you going?
I have no specific destination every day. I just walk around the mountain on patrol. I want to protect the environment. I walk between 20,000 and 40,000 footsteps a day. My phone records this.
A video showing the landscape around this Milestone
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