Karin Muller - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Karin Muller is a Swiss-born author, filmmaker, photographer, and adventurer. Muller set out in the 1990s to travel the world's historic highways. She is an expert lecturer on Japan for the National Geographic Society

National Geographic Society

The National Geographic Society , headquartered in Washington, D.C. in the United States, is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world. Its interests include geography, archaeology and natural science, the promotion of environmental and historical...

, has been featured on National Public Radio and Minnesota Public Radio

Minnesota Public Radio

Minnesota Public Radio , is the flagship National Public Radio member network for the state of Minnesota. With its three services, News & Information, Classical Music and The Current, MPR operates a 42-station regional radio network in the upper Midwest serving over 8 million people...

's Marketplace

Marketplace (radio program)

Marketplace is a radio program that focuses on business, the economy, and events that influence them. Hosted by Kai Ryssdal, the show is produced and distributed by American Public Media, in association with the University of Southern California...

, and her writing appears in National Geographic and Traveler magazines.

Her first expedition took her to the Ho Chi Minh Trail

Ho Chi Minh trail

The Ho Chi Minh trail was a logistical system that ran from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to the Republic of Vietnam through the neighboring kingdoms of Laos and Cambodia...

in Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

, which enabled her to produce a PBS

Public Broadcasting Service

The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....

television special, Hitchhiking Vietnam, and a companion book by Globe Pequot Press

Globe Pequot Press

Globe Pequot is the world's leading book publisher and distributor of outdoor recreation and leisure titles. Travelers, outdoor enthusiasts and horse lovers depend on the 500 new titles the division of Morris Communications publishes annually.-Imprints:...

of the same name.

Her second expedition took her to the Inca Road

Inca Empire

The Inca Empire, or Inka Empire , was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political and military center of the empire was located in Cusco in modern-day Peru. The Inca civilization arose from the highlands of Peru sometime in the early 13th century...

, a four-thousand-mile trek from Quito, Ecuador to Santiago, Chile

Santiago, Chile

Santiago , also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile, and the center of its largest conurbation . It is located in the country's central valley, at an elevation of above mean sea level...

resulting in a television series, Along the Inca Road for National Geographic and a book published by the Adventure Press.

Muller's third adventure took her to Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, where she lived with a pre-Buddhist mountain ascetic cult

Yamabushi

' are Japanese mountain ascetic hermits with a long tradition as mighty warriors endowed with supernatural powers. They follow the Shugendō doctrine, an integration of mainly esoteric Buddhism of the Shingon sect, with Tendai and Shinto elements...

, joined a samurai

Samurai

is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...

-mounted archery

Archery

Archery is the art, practice, or skill of propelling arrows with the use of a bow, from Latin arcus. Archery has historically been used for hunting and combat; in modern times, however, its main use is that of a recreational activity...

team, and completed a 1,300-kilometer pilgrimage

Shikoku Pilgrimage

The or is a multi-site pilgrimage of 88 temples associated with the Buddhist monk Kūkai on the island of Shikoku, Japan. A popular and distinctive feature of the island's cultural landscape, and with a long history, large numbers of pilgrims still undertake the journey for a variety of ascetic,...

around Shikoku

Shikoku

is the smallest and least populous of the four main islands of Japan, located south of Honshū and east of the island of Kyūshū. Its ancient names include Iyo-no-futana-shima , Iyo-shima , and Futana-shima...

. This journey was published in Japanland: A Year in Search of Wa
Japanland: A Year in Search of Wa
Japanland: A Year in Search of Wa is a 2004 documentary television series and book by American documentary filmmaker and travel author Karin Muller, who spent a year in Japan searching for wa, the Japanese concept of harmony .Japanland was written and filmed by Muller, an American judoist who...

, as both a documentary series and book. She took no camera crew or companions, or even much money, and went on foot and emerged profoundly changed and understanding more, but also realized as a "typical" American she could not really become Japanese.

Muller lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...

Non-profit activities

Muller has founded an educational organization named Take 2: The Student's Point of View whose mission is to help students develop global citizenship and leadership skills so that they can better understand the challenges faced by people in conflict regions around the world. Muller spends two to three months filming in various locales, then provides the raw footage to North American schools free of charge. Students are encouraged to use the footage and supporting documentation to create documentaries or short films reflecting the issues that they learn about while going through the footage. The first projects have involved footage from Darfur

Darfur

Darfur is a region in western Sudan. An independent sultanate for several hundred years, it was incorporated into Sudan by Anglo-Egyptian forces in 1916. The region is divided into three federal states: West Darfur, South Darfur, and North Darfur...

; 37 hours of footage were provided to schools, and a number of documentary programs have been completed. Approximately 40 schools have joined the project thus far. Footage to be supplied in 2009 will come from Sudan and Cuba.

External links

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