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.
We were crossing and recrossing the route of the Long March, the historic 1930s retreat undertaken by tens of thousands of Mao’s communists to escape destruction at the hands of the nationalists during the Chinese civil war. The fleeing communist army, which included immense columns of women and children, dwindled from about 100,000 to around 8,000 through hunger, disease, and military battles. Back then, refugees, ragtag militias, and bandits would have been walking the roads. Eventually, Mao regrouped of course.
Today, nobody walks the roads. It was just my colleague, a business entrepreneur from Shanghai named Becky Lin, and me.
We climbed Sichuan hills that were green as young bamboo sprouts, green as old brass. Quadrangular fields of chilies grew in the valleys. The village shops sold packaged junk food. The villages all looked identical because they’d been rebuilt a decade ago under the same economic programs. Boxy two-story brick houses painted white. Cell phone towers. Concrete roads unspooling everywhere. There wasn’t much remembering. Nobody spoke of the Long March anymore. And yet the sight of a work-dulled scythe, propped next to a shoulder basket made of hand-woven rattan, could transport you back to the Neolithic in a footstep.
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
Tao Cheng Yan
Assembly plant worker, age 32
Who are you?
I’m a mother of two children. My main responsibility now is to take care of the children and work.
Where do you come from?
I’m living in my family’s village home. My mother and I live here.
Where are you going?
It’s going to be a long journey. I have a lot of ideas. For example, I want to get a driver’s license. My longer-term goal is to get a car. That way, I can drive my kids to school, and not always hire a driver. I can shop in the next county, where things are cheaper, or go shopping in Chengdu. The local government has improved life here. We have a concrete road now. It used to be dirt.
A video showing the landscape around this Milestone
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