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.
The famous Nakasendo Road tethered Edo, present-day Tokyo, to the imperial capital at Kyoto.
For more than 300 years, starting in the early 17th century, its hundreds of kilometers of flagstones funneled trade and political authority through inland Japan. I imagined noblewomen traveling in uchikatsugi, veiled limpet hats. Villagers bent under yoked baskets. Tradesmen and pilgrims. Mounted samurai. Sixty-nine post towns pegged off its route. The trailside lodgings were segregated by social class.
Walking partner Soichiro Koriyama, guests Akihiro Yamamoto and Katsuki Suzuki, and I followed the Nakasendo Road for a week. It unspooled through green river valleys wedged between sharp snow peaks. It puttered along farm tracks. It turned into barren highways. One day it tricked us. Though marked clearly on a map, it was nowhere to be seen. Bewildered, we glanced about us, panting and sweating in a steep bamboo thicket. This was because the Nakasendo’s ghost had seeped away. It coursed 60 meters under our boots in a tunnel dug through the heart of a mountain.
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
Setsuko Chimura
77, retired local administrator
Who are you?
I used to supervise programs in the mayor’s office. I ran a kindergarten. Now I’m just gardening.
Where do you come from?
I was born here. When I was a little girl all these roads were still dirt.
Where are you going?
At my age? (She points to the sky.) Maybe next I’m going to heaven.
A video showing the landscape around this Milestone
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