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.
It was green hill country. Hot. Muggy. We walked past an old man carrying a bucket of wild chestnuts. He was a hunter out gathering bait for wild pig traps. He said there were bears in the surrounding forests. Few people wanted to hunt anymore in Japan, he grumped. He didn’t want to be interviewed.
I imagined him an aged ronin, an unemployed samurai, with his unused katana balanced across his shoulders, the blade long-unused but still sharp. Then the path sidled next to a highway swooshing with car traffic, and all such romantic nonsense dissolved. I was glad I was alive now, not then.
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
Michelle Yeonho Hyun
Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts at New York University-Shanghai.
Who are you?
I’m a curator from Shanghai, supposedly.
Where do you come from?
I’m from the U.S.
Where are you going?
Hopefully, to Yamaguchi. If I make it.
A video showing the landscape around this Milestone
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