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AFRICA 6 SOUTH AMERICA AUSTRALIA + NEW ZEALAND ::- ::- ... 02 In Africa , a trail of three-million-year-o ld fossilized footprints has been found, set in wet volcani c ash that hardened like con crete. The footprints mark the wanderings of two early humans across a savanna. a fleeting moment preserved by chance for all time. Those few steps may have been the beginning of the diaspora of evolution, as humans fol- lowed animal herds out of Africa, across Asia and over the Bering land bridge. The Americas were populated, civilizations rose and fell and tribes moved like smoke to wherever there was land. Thus humans began their history as walkers. A list of great walks the world over is like an outline of human history: the Hajj, the Silk Road, the Trail ofTears. Long walks have been for pilgrims, spice traders, refugees and soldiers returni[1g home from wars. Austalian Aborigines followed song lines using a sort of musical cartography to guide their way hun- dreds of miles across a vast landscape. Over time, large, self-sufficient cities developed. Walking became com- mercialized in the form of trade routes and ritualized in the form of spiritual pil- grimages. Political borders hemmed in nomadic cultures with imaginary lines often drawn with very real land mines. In North America, we now live in an age of highways-information and asphalt- and our civilization has slowly lost its great tradition of walking. Even indoors, moving walkways and escalators invite us to indulge our laziest impuls- es. Some people are too busy to walk yet still manage to fit time in their schedule for the StairMaster. The mind of Dante could not have conjured a circle of hell more absurd than one whose inhabitants devised one machine that walked for them while they stood still and another that kept them in place while they walked as fast as they cou ld . But there will always be people who are dissatisfied with our degree of remove from our roots as walkers. And the solution is completely free. Just walk! Long walks have become a modern pilgrimage, a ritual reenactment of our hunter- gatherer origins. There is no need to carry salt on our backs to trade for gold. For most of us, there are no holy relics to kneel before at the end. The walk itself has become the goal. Fortunately, the world is still full of trails, many of them based on the trad- ing and pilgrimage routes that spread like a web across the map. In New York City, some of the streets of lower Manhattan follow the lines of native hunting paths, which were themselves the trails of game animals through the underbrush. blue's favorite trails around the globe reflect the diversity of our planet- from the remnants of an ancient and unknown society in Peru [Inca Trail! to the trade routes of the pre- European Maori in New Zealand [Milford Track) to America's beloved grandfather of long trails [Appalachian Traill. Each of these trails can be traversed without any spe- cial equipment or mountaineering experience, The modern world is never far away, but when you walk into the woods, the world is transformed in some way. Its vast- ness is restored and its mysteries renewed. o , 34 ,