Often late to the party, I am just now reading Tracks: A Woman’s Solo Trek Across 1,700 Miles of Australian Outback by Robyn Davidson. Yes, she did that, with camels she bought (because they are so plentiful in Australia), having worked to earn them and learn how to handle them. She was trailed by a photographer from National Geographic and was accompanied by Aboriginals through some of the most perilous stretches of desert because otherwise it was unlikely she would make it alive.
It was a physical journey, but also an inward one, a pilgrimage in which she found her way toward a mystery that would either make her or crush her, one or the other. We are glad it made her. And, as a biproduct, a docu-movie was made by the same name, Tracks.
As her long and arduous preparations finally came to an end, and she actually launched into the unknown journey before her, she wrote these words, which have to be the perfect description of leaping across the threshold into the great liminal unknown. They recognize an undeniable truth that all of us, at one time or another, must also see and accept:
Recent Comments