A 7 year... walk?

via

Here's something that is so cool/amazing/adventurous, and yet another thing I wish that I could do if I was braver: http://www.outofedenwalk.com/. I will just let his website sum it up for you: 

"Over the next seven years, writer Paul Salopek will recreate that epic journey on foot, starting at our species’ birthplace in Ethiopia and ending at the southern tip of South America, where our forebears ran out of horizon."

That epic journey referring to our ancestors' migration millions of years ago when Alaska and Russia were still connected. Salopek has been dropped off in a village in Ethiopia and just set out walking. For the next 7 years. Did I mention he's walking? There are parts of it that I'd be a bit scared about, like walking through the Middle East (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan don't scream hospitality to me). It also helps that he's a man on a peaceful mission. And he's the type of man who seems to be able to want to learn from and interact with as many people as possible. 

The man himself. via

I've always been drawn to these nomadic adventures; I know that as high maintenance and appreciative of creature comforts as I am that things like backpacking would never really work out. But I like the idea of just picking up and going somewhere new, and doing it in as simplistic a manner as possible. I always tell my friend Corey how much I admire him for going over to France and teaching English in Middle/High schools, especially because he ends his emails with: "this weekend I might not be able to Skype you because I might be going to Italy or Switzerland, haven't decided yet." So. Jealous. But alas, Atlanta is as far as I go for now, and, looking back (and considering the fact that I cried every day when my mom dropped me off for 2nd grade), I still marvel at the fact that I was able to make it this far.