The June issue of National Geographic contains a feature on risk taking and why explorers are prepared to face dangers that most people wouldn’t. The last few paragraphs are about Paul Salopek’s latest project which involves walking over 22,000 miles from Ethiopia to the southern tip of Chile (one of the routes that early Human’s took on their migration out of Africa) over a period of seven years. I include below the last two paragraphs of the article:

From “The Mystery of Risk” – National Geographic, June 2013:

“The philosophy behind this walk is to get readers to focus less on the notion that the world is a dangerous place,” he says. “The world can kill you in a heartbeat, whether you stay at home or leave home.” Instead, he hopes “to get readers to think about the wider horizons, the wider possibilities in life, the trails taken and not taken, and be comfortable with uncertainty.”

Basically Salopek wants to remind people that at our innermost core we are all risk takers, if some more than others. And this shared willingness to explore our planet has bound our species from the very beginning.