For news, updates, and storytelling from the Out of Eden Walk nonprofit, please follow our dedicated account: @outofedenwalk.social. We’re grateful for your continued support as the Walk unfolds across the world.

Dragonfly catcher, How far have you gone today In your wandering? — Kagano Chiyojo, 18th century Capsule hotel in #Hiroshima, #Japan. @outofedenwalk #EdenWalk

孤独の地理 @outofedenwalk https://natgeo.nikkeibp.co.jp/atcl/web/19/051900057/052800002/?ST=m_column

SEISMIC SCARECROWS: In #Japan, a land of earthquakes, farmers & gardeners use handmade, breeze-powered whirligigs to send tremors into the soil, to scare away mice & other crop raiders. #sustainable #gardening https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/seismic-scarecrows/

The peasant hoes on. The person who asked the way Is now out of sight. — Yosa Buson, 18th century Osaka train station hotel. @outofedenwalk in #Japan. #EdenWalk

Beyond the tourist sites that lure millions to #Japan—the temples, dazzling city cores, & national parks—sprawls a world few outsiders see: a rural landscape stripped of people & steeped in loneliness. An @outofedenwalk dispatch from a Japanese ghostlands. https://t.co/hFnCWu0yz7

Hunting and gathering in #Japan. Writers need their potassium. @outofedenwalk #EdenWalk

What’s it like walking 1000 kilometers through #rural #Japan? Among other things, mighty lonely. @TheWorld @outofedenwalk https://theworld.org/stories/2025/05/23/out-of-eden-walk-an-eerie-walk-through-japanese-ghost-towns

What a strange thing! to be alive beneath cherry blossoms. ― Kobayashi Issa, 18th century The @outofedenwalk trail begins in #Japan. #EdenWalk

Setting out to hike across rural #Japan, my walking partner Soichiro Koriyama decided to photograph every person we met. I thought he was nuts. There would be too many people! But the opposite was true: We traversed a depopulated ghostlands. @outofedenwalk https://t.co/hFnCWu16oF

THE GEOGRAPHY OF LONELINESS: Much of #Japan’s rural countryside is radically depopulated. Walking through it can be a weirdly beautiful, melancholy experience. @outofedenwalk #walking #EdenWalk https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/the-geography-of-loneliness/

The Sea Point coffee house for retired fishermen. Tottori prefecture, #Japan. @outofedenwalk. #EdenWalk

A few months ago @outofedenwalk wrote about the devastation of coastal wetlands in South Korea. Scientists, activists & the worldwide public have petitioned courts to halt the destruction of the last corner of intertidal habitat. Add your voice here. 1/ https://t.co/utnrfZP8GQ

Record-breaking heat waves are stunting #rice harvests in #Japan & compelling the country's elderly farmers to retire. A report from the blistering @outofedenwalk trail through Asia. #ClimateCrisis @TheWorld https://t.co/LE1sVrGyN4

Every 100 miles, we pause to record the scene along the @outofedenwalk's global trail following the pathways of the ancestors. Here's Milestone number #103: Trekking a forest in #Japan some 16,000 miles from the walk's starting point in #Ethiopia. https://t.co/9Q9KqAjR8X

The latest @outofedenwalk trail dispatch on @TheWorld: Walking through the #ClimateCrisis in rural #Japan, through a scorched landscape of wilting farmers and heat-stunted rice crops—and a looming food security bottleneck. https://t.co/LE1sVrGyN4

A quiet forest trail. An old hunter carrying a bucket of wild chestnuts for boar traps, a stooped ghost from the past—some ronin with sheathed blade across his shoulders. Then: the roaring void of a modern highway. #Japan Milestone 103. @outofedenwalk https://t.co/9Q9KqAkoYv

How do you cross seas & oceans on a global walk? You could fly. Or you could pound the docks until you find passage on cargo ships. Fellow passengers can include 800 camels. Or dozens of tipsy Turkish truck drivers. @outofedenwalk @TheWorld https://t.co/OlFsx4DtQ7

Walking across #Kazakhstan on the @outofedenwalk, I befriended the archeologist Andrey Astafyev. Astafyev & his family helped me plant caches of food & water across a vast & desolately beautiful grasslands called #Mangystau. Today, he’s stumbled across a ‘lost city’ there. 1/

Walking through rural Japan during the hottest summer on record teaches 2 things: First, ice cream is free at the cybercafé micro-hotels en route; and second, enjoy it while you can because, thanks to the climate crisis, Japan’s food security is cooked. https://t.co/Loqz09Pe4W

Walking across the world you hit coastlines. So you hop cargo ships. And on these vessels you meet characters. Like Jamal Osili, an engineer on the Red Sea who swoons over recorded birdsongs. Or 27 tipsy Turkish truckers floating in the Caspian. @TheWorld https://t.co/LmT9x7EABB

“We’ve tried switching to tropical fruits,” said a farmer named Tsunehiro Takami. “But the soil isn’t right. So we’re trying different kinds of rice.” In Japan, the climate crisis hits humankind in the only place it cares about: It's belly. @outofedenwalk https://t.co/Loqz09Pe4W

How does the @outofedenwalk, which is inching on foot from Africa to South America, handle sea crossings along the way? The answer: no planes. Instead, hop cargo ships hauling Ethiopian camels,Turkish trucks, & more. Some salty tales on @TheWorld 1/ https://t.co/LmT9x7EABB

10,000 years ago, we herded much of the large, ancestral megafauna roaming the Americas through our intestines, just as today we deploy our mechanical comforts & remodel the planet into a violent sauna. A report from the broiling rice paddies of Japan. https://t.co/Loqz09Pe4W

An exhibition in Paris, at the Picasso Museum, recalls the rise of fascism in Europe through the control of the imagination: Demonizing art led to dehumanizing people. The Nazis branded all nontraditional & unpatriotic art “degenerate.” Sound familiar? 1/ https://t.co/AjdNZQhkcd

Why do we travel (as opposed to take a holiday)? To seek difference, welcome chance. And how do we accomplish this? By releasing control. I’m startled when people ask, ‘Aren’t you bored by walking continents?’ Because every step is a surprise. @TheWorld https://t.co/IDNbUj55Gr

MILESTONE #102 of @outofedenwalk: A little instant coffee. A little Hemingway's 'Old Man & the Sea,' A little immigration law-breaking. A little melancholy. The latest 100-mile recording of the surface of the Earth on a trek from Africa to South America. https://t.co/vpmTiC6Kag

You’ll see things on foot that you’ll never see driving. That’s the difference between genuine travel & mere transportation. And it applies both to walking your neighborhood & walking across the world. A report on global discoveries at 3 mph. @TheWorld https://t.co/IDNbUj55Gr

South Koreans recently voted with their feet: When their president tried to steal power in a coup, colossal protests jammed the streets. That president is now impeached. Maybe #Korea should add K-democracy to its other main export—#Kpop. @outofedenwalk https://t.co/GwRHnuXDXX

The @outofedenwalk has a newly designed web site that includes some cool mapping features. Take stroll through our trove of half a million words & thousands of photos and videos. Let us know if you hit any obstacles. https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org

What are those dots strung out across the world? Milestones: In-the-moment recordings taken 100 miles apart on a walk from Africa to South America. The landscape. The people. This one's at the Korean DMZ. Check out the @ArcGISStoryMaps. @outofedenwalk https://t.co/KMWPVorSbD

South #Korea appears to occupy a peninsula: In truth, it's an island, ringed by minefields & the sea. A report from a hike thru an outpost of contradictions--including soy-sauce maestros, old-fashioned courtesans, & 1/4 million pro-democracy protesters. https://t.co/GwRHnuXDXX

GOODBYE TO SOUTH KOREA: Some thoughts on walking 650 km across a country that functions as a laboratory of the future. #SouthKorea #Korea #EdenWalk https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/goodbye-to-korea/

A friend who helped the @outofedenwalk in #China, Zhu Dan, has joined another expedition to retrace the steps of eccentric 1920s explorer Joseph Rock through the wild mountains of #Sichuan. Traveler Micheal Woodhead, who tramped the same rugged routes in the 1990s, joined him. https://t.co/YNNrA...

A new MARGINLANDS podcast: @AratiKumarRao & @prempanicker talk literary orienteering with seer-novelist @nilanjanaroy about peering 'through' pulsing megacities (Delhi!) to the bruised natural landscapes that once nurtured them & that haunt them still. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0L6GIJXs3k

Reposting this because on top of a brutal civil war, #Myanmar is now grappling with the heart-crushing fallout of a 7.7 earthquake. At least 1000 dead. Probably many more. Please lend a hand with a donation for food, shelter & meds. A reputable aid group: https://t.co/05YWbVp12W https://t.co...

Avisha Jain walked 150 km along the Luni River in #India, expecting to find a beloved lifeline. Instead she saw a river on life support—plundered for sand & polluted. Another sobering yet lively @moving_upstream report from our partners at @veditum https://t.co/bgPSKz1eag

After plodding for 2 blistering months across the #Korean peninsula, walking partner Lee Junseok logged a GPS map of personal waypoints. It's Homeric: wasp stings, surprise Mexican lunches, monsoon downpours, English high tea in village huts, K-pop malls. https://t.co/Uyo8KaPGMy

A comedian’s union joins massive protests in #Turkey against the increasingly authoritarian rule of president Erdoğan, who imprisoned his main opposition a week ago. Turkey’s democracy & economy have tumbled backwards since @outofedenwalk hiked through in 2014. 📸Nil Delahaye.

‘It would take me years of reading, thought, and experience to learn again that in this world limits are not only inescapable but indispensable.’ —Wendell Berry Trying to weigh mercy at the #Busan fish market, South #Korea. #EdenWalk

Walking partner Junseok Lee got a bit emotional finally toeing the green ocean waves in #Busan, South #Korea. After slogging 650 km across Korea in the fiery heat, his dad called to ask where he was. “It’s done,” Lee said into his phone. He was home. https://t.co/Uyo8KaPGMy

‘It's no fish ye're buying—it’s men's lives,’ wrote Walter Scott, 19th century poet, about the fatal risks faced by deep-sea fishers. Actually, it’s fishes lives you’re buying: 1 to 2.7 trillion wild ocean fish a year are eaten by humans. Busan fish market, South #Korea

Walking partner Junseok Lee (left) & photographer Jun Michael Park step to the finish line of the @outofedenwalk in South #Korea, the port of #Busan. Busan-born, Lee wept when he finally reached dockside. Unspooling behind: two months of blistering summer trails.

The bleakest legacy of the #Covid-19 pandemic—5 years on? To the deaths of 7 million across the world, I'd add the death of trust. Whether in China or the US, skepticism of science, due to the official responses, ensures the next plague will be deadlier. https://t.co/UbHMHnx5nc

It seems like another lifetime-the memory is so awful-but #COVID began erupting cross the globe only 5 years ago. I was walking in #Myanmar when the virus erupted. My 4-story hotel emptied overnight. Starvation became a reality. A look back with @TheWorld. https://t.co/jmNNRvdLDl

Family farmers toil in small plots near the end of @outofedenwalk’s 650-kilometer foot trail through South #Korea, the port city of #Busan, visible in the distance. #EdenWalk

Frog ecologist Jang Yikweon searches rice paddies near Miryang, South #Korea, for frogs, which are threatened by habitat loss to massive economic development: rapid urbanization and industrial agriculture. A tree frog, Dryophytes japonicus is among his quarry. #EdenWalk

A great pleasure to chat with @AratiKumarRao and @prempanicker about long-wave storytelling on their brand-new podcast MARGINLANDS: story structures, news literacy, environmental reporting…and what the iambic beat of walking does to prose. @outofedenwalk https://t.co/TmD96pn1cp

Serious play. Walking partner Junseok Lee and field biologist Jang Yikweon head out into the golden tomorrows—a glowing, sunset paddy near Miryang, South #Korea. They will hunt frogs to sample for species diversity. #EdenWalk

GLANCE BACK: Mud-slogging through the monsoons of northern #India with @Pri_Borpujari, Virender Singh—and our brave-hearted donkey, Raju. Summer, 2018. #EdenWalk https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/articles/2019-01-goodbye-raju