Tracks REVIEW
World literature is riddled with stories of people who set off on epic journeys. Gilgamesh, Aeneas, Ulysses, Dante, Don Quixote, Chaucer, Dorothy, the Joads, Pi Patel, Philias Fogg, Frodo, the Dawn Treader, the Gunslinger, Ken Ilgunas, Huck Finn, Jack Keruac, White Fang, Buck, Cheryl Strayed, Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboa, Peter Jenkins, and Ulysses Everett McGill from Oh Brother Where Art Thou.
What causes humans to embark on these journeys? And do they ever find what they set out for when they take that first step?
Robyn Davidson tells us that she headed out across the Austrian desert in the mid-1970’s for a 2000 mile walk because she “could not think of a reason not to.” In her telling of the story, she was driven by some Rousseu-vian impulse to do something illogical. “It is our conditioned, vastly overrated rational mind,” she insists with Rousseau, “which screws everything up.” In the film, she puts it this way:
“I believe that when you have been stuck too long in one spot its best to throw a grenade where you are standing and jump,”
. . . and then “pray.”
She calls this type of decision (and decisions like it) “pivots around which your existence turns,”
“— small intuitive flashes, when you know you have done something correct for a change, when you think you are on the right track. . . . I watched a pale dawn streak the cliffs with Day-glo and realized this was one of them. It was a moment of pure, uncomplicated confidence—and lasted about ten seconds.”
Later, she refers to the decision to walk across a desert as a result of her having “conned herself into doing something difficult.” “I had simply not allowed myself to think of the consequences,” she says, “but had closed my eyes, jumped in, and before I knew where I was, it was impossible to renege.”
Her character in the film narrates while we watch her and her dog, Diggity, and her camels plodding along.
“No more loved ones to worry about. No more ties. No more duties. No more people needing you to be one thing or another. No more conundrums. . . . All I know is that when it is just me, my animals, and the desert, I feel free.” And as for how one survives that level and extent of isolation, she offers this piece of wisdom: “It seems that the universe gave us three things to make life bearable; hope, jokes, and dogs but the greatest of these gifts was dogs.”
Her story has obviously inspired many people but in her retelling, she clarifies that she would not want all her readers to go head out for the Saharah or Mt. Everest, or the Arctic.
“I did not mean that people should drop what they were doing and head for the wilder places,’ she insists, “Certainly not that they should copy what I did. I meant that one can choose adventure in the most ordinary of circumstances. Adventure of the mind, or to use an old-fashioned word, the spirit.”
Someday, I hope to find a reason to go wander off somewhere. I hope, by the time that happens, I will have developed enough of a poetic gift to tell the story of what happens.
Question for Comment: What has been your life’s greatest pilgrimage or journey thus far?
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