Paul Salopek: recommendation

Transcript context

…Relative to the time before you started, what is it you no longer care about, or it seems petty to you now but back then seemed important? That’s a good question. Nothing immediately springs to mind of a nonbanal nature. I’ve never been a person obsessed with equipment. I’ve never been somebody who is cued into careerist prospects. My career trajectory, which I wouldn’t recommend to anybody, has been very erratic, veering from fishing boats into newsrooms and into gold mines in Western Australia and cattle ranches in Chihuahua and everywhere else in between. What I remind my readers who ask similar questions is that I started this when I was 50, a pretty well-formed personality. I knew where I’d come from. I didn’t know where I’m going, like everybody else, but had a methodology down already. I was doing a lot of what I’m doing on this project already through my journalism career. I had wonderful editors at the Chicago Tribune, who, when they saw an idea that merited it, gave me the freedom to spend months and months wandering through these stories, particularly in Africa. As I’ve described before, the Out Eden Walk is more of an arrival than a departure. I don’t know if that answers your question or if it’s a disappointing answer, but that’s the truth. What’s true is true. How is it that you crossed the desert? You’ve been through some of the Gulf States, I think.…

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