A Little Inspiration: ‘Tracks’, power, taking the first step, and escaping society’s limitations.
Two years ago, on a plane to Australia, I watched the incredible movie ‘Tracks’.
It is an adaptation of a memoir of the same name, detailing Robyn Davidson’s 9 month journey in 1977 from Alice Springs across 2,700 kilometers (1,700 miles) of Australian deserts to the Indian Ocean, with her dog and four camels. Read that sentence again. 9 months….a lone woman with 4 camels….2,700 kilometres of brutal Australian desert.
It spoke to my travelling nature so strongly that I sat with tears streaming down my face for a lot of the movie. (I always find it amusing that you can sit on a plane crying, laughing out loud, or jumping in fright, at a movie….and no-one else has a clue exactly why or what you’re watching.)
If you have any travel in you, are drawn to introversion, minimalism, simplicity, nature, or just love a good life-changing journey….you might love it too.
Just last night….well, in the middle of the night (because baby) I finished reading the book the movie was based on.
Two passages near the end really struck me.
I could add my explanation or 2 cents about them…but the author writes so clearly my words would be superfluous.
So I’ll just leave you with Robyn Davidson…
“….there was one clear fact that emerges from the quagmire. The trip was easy. It was no more dangerous than crossing the street, or driving to the beach, or eating peanuts. The two important things that I did learn were that you are as powerful and strong as you allow yourself to be, and that the most difficult part of any endeavour is taking the first step, making the first decision. And I knew even then that I would forget them time and time again and would have to go back and repeat those words that had become meaningless and try to remember. I knew even then that, instead of remembering the truth of it, I would lapse into a useless nostalgia. Camel trips, as I suspected all along, do not begin or end, they merely change form.”
(Ok, so I do feel the need to add one little thing. This passage was so eye-opening to me because when you read of her journey the very last words that come to mind are easy or not dangerous, as it seemed both very bloody hard and extremely dangerous. So if she could come to see it is easy then her metaphor could apply to any journey of any kind.)
AND….and this one really gets me….
“The question I’m most commonly asked is ‘why?’ A more pertinent question would be why is it that more people don’t attempt to escape the limitations imposed on them? If ‘Tracks’ has a message at all, it is that one can be awake to the demand for obedience that seems natural simply because it is familiar. Wherever there is pressure to conform (one person’s conformity is often in the interests of another person’s power), there is a requirement to resist. Of course I did not mean that people should drop what they are doing and head for the wilder places, 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, spirit.”
Much love,
Kristie
xx
