Tracks

Tracks

Robyn Davidson

A Woman’s Solo Trek Across 1,700 miles of Australian Outback

Vintage Departures

Vintage Books

~~

Recent trip to Mizoram read this gem on the Australian desert. Most of it was to the company of a candle burning near and the occasional church-bells afar. Candle-light as if accentuates the reading experience! Last trip it was Africa.

Such connect with a book is rare. Many a line where one halts, reads again, and appreciates the character’s multiple shades. Also one takes off at times on trips of one’s own; one line could launch more than one thought. And there are more than few such lines. Some such lines and thoughts they launched I share below. I have followed these lines in the order in which they appear in the book. They are followed (though not necessarily) by an indication of story’s phase at the point and then my musings.

I had wondered, more than once, as I flipped the pages, on how she had been able to maintain notes bearing this level of detail and intensity as she walked in the desert, cooked, got lost, loaded – unloaded stuff, loved her camels and more. Well, she did not maintain a diary and wrote the book two years later at a flat in London! Once you read the book this will strike as crazy. As I looked her and the book on the net I realize there is a LOT on either and the few embedded links in no way suffice.

~~

There are some moments in life that are like 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.

It is not often that the first page of a book has this stunning a line. One that makes you feel that this is THE BOOK you would want to read.

~~

“What about the blacks?” I asked. The suspiciousness returned. ‘There’s nothing damn well wrong with the blacks except what the whites do to them.’

This pertains to the natives of the Australian desert. One of her initial interactions in the town she had moved to prepare herself.

I guess the line would work universally for the classes that control power and those which bear the brunt of this power. Such succinctly put. As they say ‘the educated have brought more harm to the world’.

~~

A compliment bled from the master was worth a million given freely by anyone else. There have been many happy slaves.

This line comes during her days as a ‘trainee’ – learning of camels. Of bearing an eccentric trainer.

Stark. Sad. And like other things stark and sad - true.

~~

And it struck me then that the most difficult thing had been the decision to act, the rest had been merely tenacity – and the fears were paper tigers. One really could do anything one had decided to do whether it were changing a job, moving to a new place, divorcing a husband or whatever, one really could act to change and control one’s life; and the procedure, the process, was its own reward.

Journey surely is more important that the destination. Lines like these - at times - made me feel glad; as if my thoughts had been interestingly articulated and shared. At times they encouraged me to take another journey.

Taking decision is the crux. Wonder why most of us do not decide in favour of what we like doing, and end up travelling with the herd.

~~

But I now understood that I had always been a loner, and that this condition was a gift rather than something to be feared. Alone, in my castle, I could see more clearly what loneliness was. For the first time it flashed on me that the way I had conducted my life was always to allow myself that remoteness, always protect that high, clear place that could not be shared without risking its destruction. I had paid for this over and over with moments of neurotic despair but it had been worth it.

A large section of the book is pre-journey. As in getting to know the camels, people, town and working on preparations. How she evolves and moves from one step to another during the phase is what these pages are about.

This is a rare book that one really resonates with at multiple levels. Being alone has seldom had a positive tone attached to it. During a conversation a friend had shared of how being different is not encouraged in our society but rather actively discouraged; right from school days. Being alone by its nature is being different.

~~

I was self protective, suspicious and defensive and I was also aggressively ready to pounce on anyone who looked like they might me going to give me a hard time. Though this may sound like a negative quality, it was essential for me to develop beyond the archetypal female creature who from birth had been trained into to be sweet, pliable, forgiving, compassionate and door-mattish.

Understanding more about self in the process of getting ready for the trek, amidst cycles of hope and despair.

I have often wondered why we are taught to be submissive. Submissive as we should not create a scene, submissive as we are junior in age, submissive to relatives who should be rotting in hell in first place! If we appreciate and respect the good shouldn’t we respond actively to the bad influences as well!

~~

I believe the subconscious always knows what is the best. It is our conditioned, vastly overrated mind which screws everything up.

This is from the phase where she moves from one base to another and interacts with wider range of people, in the small town, as she prepares herself for the trek.

How many times have we not followed our instincts, in favour of what appears to be logic, only to regret it later!

~~

How animals ever forgive us for what we do to them, I will never understand.

After treating camels badly.

~~

I can deal with pigs so easily, but nice people always confound me. How can you tell a nice person that you wish they were dead, that they’d never been born, that you wish they would crawl away into some hole and expire? No, not that, merely that you wish fate had never caused you to meet.

A photographer enters her trek and life. This is during the initial days when she found it an ordeal to bear him.

~~

Because everyone believed that the indigenous people would eventually die out, allowing them to keep small sections of their land was seen as a temporary measure which would make life safer for settlers. The blacks were rounded up like cattle by police and citizens on horseback wielding guns. Often, different tribes were forced to live on one small area; as some of these groups were traditionally antagonistic, this created friction and planted the seeds of cultural decay. 

This is once the trek begins and she reaches a settlement.

How little we know of people we manage and how managers have ended up taking similar and now appearing silly decisions in most places. Is this notion that ‘we know what is better for the other than the other person herself’ the cause of evil stupidity?

~~

Never let it be said that the camera does not lie. It lies like a pig in mud. It captures the projections of whoever happens to be using it, never the truth.

The photographer friend returns to meet her at one of the halts along the trek and shows her some of the images of the initial moments of the trek.

The onslaught of photographers since her time has changed the very meaning of photography.

~~

Not being a paternal-style protectionist means seeing catastrophic mistakes being made, and not being able to do a thing about it except advise, because you know that the only way the people can learn to deal with the white world is to make such mistakes.

People here are the natives of Australian desert and this is on at one of the halts where she puts up for few days at a set-up that works with these people.

A telling lesson this line. But wonder how many of us would be able to follow this. Especially amidst the feeling that it is already too late and we need to intervene to save the world!

~~

Ceremonies are the visible link between the Aboriginal people and their land. Once dispossessed of this land, ceremonial life deteriorates, people lose their strength, meaning, essence and identify. . .

I read this in Mizoram where oil-palm is taking over natural vegetation in community owned lands. I wondered if oil-palm would make it difficult for Mizos to get bamboo. Bamboo which is an integral part of lifestyle, of culture. Irony that we identity Mizoram with bamboo dance (linked with harvest), glorify it in calendars and diaries and are simultaneously bent on replacing bamboo with oil-palm!

~~

No amount of anthropological detail can begin to convey Aboriginal feeling for their land. It is everything – their law, their ethics, their reason for existence. Without that relationship they become ghosts. Half people. They are not separate from the land. When they lose it, they lose themselves, their spirit, their culture. This is why the land rights movement has become so essential. Because, by denying them their land, we are committing cultural and, in this case, racial genocide.

The break she took from trek and interactions at the camp gave her time and helped her understand the natives better. She interacted with people working with natives.

I have ever believed that we can never understand others whom we stay with. What then to say of those stays years ago or miles away in separate milieus?

Such pertinent in today’s time when land is taken away for mining, for manufacturing, for defence and for tigers! People in cities, who don’t want to part an inch of their land – for some reason – justify these takeovers in the name of ‘development’. Some of them are unclear on what development stands for other than flyovers (for example) in their cities for cars to go quicker. (Those based at Delhi, our city of flyovers, will know flyovers have not worked).

~~

They (camels) were unsaddled by mid-afternoon and immediately began to play. I had been watching and laughing at them for a while and suddenly, spontaneously, threw off all my clothes and joined them in a romp. We rolled and we kicked and we sent the dust flying over each other. I was covered with thick caked orange dust and my hair was matted. It was the most honest hour of unselfconscious fun I had ever had. Most of us, I am sure, have forgotten how to play. We’ve made up games instead. And competition is the force which holds these games together. The desire to win, to beat someone else, has supplanted play – the doing of something just for itself.

She then moved in a landscape which was monotonous. During the stretch of days when she would not come across a fellow human-being.

Life has its own ways of teaching us. We just need to be open.

~~

The two most 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.

A brilliant line on the final page as well.

She starts with intuition and confidence, and ends with belief and decision.

~~

Thanks Anuradha for sharing the book and Pu Sanga for not repairing the electricity connection at Damparengpui; absolutely loved the Australian desert in candle-light.