Editor's note: An inclusive new feature of the Out of Eden Walk is being launched to convert all the walk’s writing into audio format for audiences who prefer to listen to the project’s storytelling. Here, narrator Lucie McNeil shares how she tackled this enormous task.
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
there is a rapture in the lonely shore,
there is society where none intrudes,
by the deep sea, and music in its roar;
I love not Man the less, but Nature more.
“Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” by Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron)
I am voicing almost half a million words of text for the Out of Eden Walk project.
There is just time before the final recordings of Chapter 6 for my daily investigation to see how the Celtic Sea is feeling. I like to check in. Preferably to be in it rather than observing it, immersed in elements and awakening senses. But not today.
The winter wind reliably delivers a colossal gray-and-white-licked roiling mass into the cove below. Today’s squalls pummel beach bars closed for winter, snatch car doors from mittened hands, and pull dogs from their straining owners. Knowing I’m just steps from trading elemental chaos for creative calm in the serenity of the recording booth, I linger a few moments longer.
The winter sea at Trevaunance Cove and Trevellas Coombe, below Wheal Kitty
Out of Eden Walk
The west coast sea is why I chose to settle in Cornwall after leaving the United States. The cliffs here are a three-minute stroll from our little recording studio, nestled right beside the restored engine house of Wheal Kitty mine, on Goonlaze heath. Wheal Kitty was one of thousands of tin, copper, and iron pyrite mines dotted across the South West peninsula, with several strung across my daily dog walk on the coast path; they bring to mind the Towers of Pengbuxi, the mysterious Chinese megaliths Paul Salopek wrote about a few months back as he hiked through the Hengduan Mountains of Sichuan Province.
My daily walk often takes me past the site of Wheal Coates mine and several others strung along this part of the Cornish coast.
Lucie McNeil
Paul’s Out of Eden Walk, retracing humankind’s Stone Age dispersal on foot from Africa and around the world, is a vibrant laboratory of all kinds of immersive storytelling: written (this is Paul, after all), visual, cartographic, and now—thankfully—in sound too.
The National Geographic Society embraces bringing the walk to many more followers through audio recordings—for those of us who are neurodivergent, visually impaired, dyslexic, or who simply prefer or need to listen rather than read.
Rusted ferns encase an expectant Sprocker puppy eager to get down to the beach. It’s hard to express how deeply this landscape affects me. It has its own voice. Maybe the verse at the top of this essay says it all.
Lucie McNeil
As the main project writer and walker, Paul says he sometimes feels as if he is watching his journey from a distance, as this multifaceted, multilayered story lab—enriched by the contributions of his walking partners and the caravanserai communities of guides, educators, students—keeps bubbling up with more ways to “know.”
My reading of this essay introduces the Out of Eden Walk oral narrative archive, by chapter. Looking ahead, starting in early June, you’ll be able to listen to all Paul’s dispatches from the start of the walk in January 2013 to the end of 2022. To listen, simply click on the SoundCloud play button.
I was—and am now more than ever—certain that a record of this immense, cross-cultural, and meditative body of work needed to be spoken aloud, to have oral expression in full, every word of it. Tearing down cultural barriers to inclusion and learning about who we are in (near) real time across continents and decades is essential, and an oral narrative is equally needed for our collective posterity too. For inquiry—afterwards. We’ll have created an interconnected, utterly unique storytelling time capsule, a metaphorical global campfire.
Rusted ferns encase an expectant Sprocker puppy eager to get down to the beach. It’s hard to express how deeply this landscape affects me. It has its own voice. Maybe the verse at the top of this essay says it all.
Lucie McNeil
As the main project writer and walker, Paul says he sometimes feels as if he is watching his journey from a distance, as this multifaceted, multilayered story lab—enriched by the contributions of his walking partners and the caravanserai communities of guides, educators, students—keeps bubbling up with more ways to “know.”
My reading of this essay introduces the Out of Eden Walk oral narrative archive, by chapter. Looking ahead, starting in early June, you’ll be able to listen to all Paul’s dispatches from the start of the walk in January 2013 to the end of 2022. To listen, simply click on the SoundCloud play button.
I was—and am now more than ever—certain that a record of this immense, cross-cultural, and meditative body of work needed to be spoken aloud, to have oral expression in full, every word of it. Tearing down cultural barriers to inclusion and learning about who we are in (near) real time across continents and decades is essential, and an oral narrative is equally needed for our collective posterity too. For inquiry—afterwards. We’ll have created an interconnected, utterly unique storytelling time capsule, a metaphorical global campfire.
The coastal path wends its way atop the cliffs. The west coast sea eventually drew me to Cornwall after I left the U.S.
Lucie McNeil
Like wild landscapes, the power of language steals my soul.
These have been long days in the studio, just me, my puppy, and 450,000 beautifully crafted words, humming with one human’s measured discovery of the state of us and the rock we’re sitting on. Paul’s journalism doesn’t fit into neat mass-media boxes of culture, environment, equality, diversity, history, politics, religion; rather his inching-along exposure to humankind shows how all our stories are like interconnecting tree roots on a forest floor.
It is pure privilege to add an aural pathway on the Out of Eden Walk journey that welcomes more people to come along.
From Africa to the Middle East to Asia, there is a lot to prep. It’s like walking: In narration, mind and body work together. Sensing. Adrenalin. There’s that feeling of resilience, of knowing just how much needs to be voiced in a day, all the cultural phrasing preparations; your nose pressed up close to a tale of our continents unfolding thousands of miles away. Lowering your pitch, creating some tension and volume and character. Taking a moment to collect yourself and repeat when you miscue some tricky phrasing. Getting the giggles. Inhale. Exhale. Be still again. Silence in a narration is a compelling, transforming storytelling tool. Holding silence for a long moment speaks volumes.
Reading the walk aloud, particularly at the hundred-mile waypoints or Milestones, I’ve been acutely aware of the silent women, whose voices are never heard, who are afraid to speak—merely to say who they are—who recoil, or even run away when Paul and his walking partners approach to ask them the three set Milestone questions: Who are you? Where do you come from? Where are you going? Because they know that only at their great peril do they step out of culture by speaking to, or even being seen, by Paul and his walking companions, if they are men.
Inside Chatterbox Audio, an aural archive emerges from the stillness of the booth.
Lucie McNeil
Paul sees you—we see you—and we hold your unspoken presence with us across this epic saga.
Finishing up the Chapter 6 narration, I’m halfway around the world now. It is early evening, and the wind is still vicious. Paul and his walking partners are in Sichuan, learning about the tea porters who shouldered heavy loads 250 years ago over the eastern Himalaya and into Tibet.
I upload the audio files for the edit, close down machines in the studio and lock up, one eye on the puppy careening gleefully outside into a stray hiker. There are no sounds other than whipping gusts around the engine house and the crunch of gravel under my feet, dashing up the steps. All feels wild and content. Familiar.
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Lucie McNeil worked for the British government and Harvard University before joining the National Geographic Society, where, as a Vice President for Strategic Engagement, she honed the storytelling impacts of explorers, scientists, artists, and the Out of Eden Walk. Since returning to the U.K., she has been working on social impact and thought-leadership projects from the north coast of Cornwall and developing audio in Northumberland for New Writing North: luciemcneil@newwritingnorth.com and Insta@loadsofwalks.
Lucie McNeil worked for the British government and Harvard University before joining the National Geographic Society, where, as a Vice President for Strategic Engagement, she honed the storytelling impacts of explorers, scientists, artists, and the Out of Eden Walk. Since returning to the U.K., she has been working on social impact and thought-leadership projects from the north coast of Cornwall and developing audio in Northumberland for New Writing North: luciemcneil@newwritingnorth.com and Insta@loadsofwalks.