Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback QUOTES

1 " And it was only then that I realized what I had let myself in for, and only then I realized how bloody thick I had been not to have predicted it. It would seem that the combination of elements--woman, desert, camels, aloneness--hit some soft sport in this era's passionless, heartless, aching psyche. It fired the imaginations of people who seem themselves as alienated, powerless, unable to do anything about a world gone mad. And wouldn't it be my luck to pick just this combination. The reaction was totally unexpected and it was very, very weird. I was now public property. I was now a kind of symbol. I was now an object of ridicule for small-minded sexists, and I was a crazy, irresponsible adventurer (though not as crazy as I would have been had I failed). But worse than all that, I was now a mythical being who had done something courageous and outside the possibilities that ordinary people could hope for. And that was the antithesis of what I wanted to share. That anyone could do anything. If I could bumble my way across a desert, then anyone could do anything. And that was true especially for women, who have used cowardice for so long to protect themselves that it has become a habit. "

― Robyn Davidson , Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

2 " It seems to me that the good lord in his infinate wisdom gave us three things to make life bearable- hope, jokes, and dogs. But the greatest of these was dogs. "

― Robyn Davidson , Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

3 " AAAAHHHHHHHhhhhh! WHOOSH, WHOOSH, YOU BASTARD! "

― Robyn Davidson , Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

4 " 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. "

― Robyn Davidson , Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

5 " I experienced that sinking feeling you get when you know you have conned yourself into doing something difficult and there's no going back. "

― Robyn Davidson , Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

6 " To be free is to learn, to test yourself constantly, to gamble. It is not safe. I had learnt to use my fears as stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks, and "

― Robyn Davidson , Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

7 " 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. "

― Robyn Davidson , Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

8 " I liked myself this way, it was such a relief to be free of disguises an prettiness and attractiveness. Above all that horrible, false, debilitating attractiveness that women hide behind. I puled my hat down over my ears so that they stuck out beneath it. 'I must remember this whn I get back. I must not fall into that trap again.' I must let people see me as I am. Like this? Yes, why not like this. But then I realized hat the rules pertaining to one set of circumstances do not necessarily pertain to another. Back there, this would just be another disguise. Back there, there was no nakedness, no one could afford it. Everyone had their social personae well fortified... "

― Robyn Davidson , Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

9 " As I look back on the trip now, as I try to sort out fact from fiction, try to remember how I felt at that particular time, or during that particular incident, try to relive those memories that have been buried so deep, and distorted so ruthlessly, there is 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 endeavor 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 a long, and as I was about to have confirmed, do not begin or end, they merely change form. "

― Robyn Davidson , Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

10 " It’s important that we leave each other and the comfort of it, and circle away, even though it’s hard sometimes, so that we can come back and swap information about what we’ve learnt even if what we do changes us and "

― Robyn Davidson , Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

11 " So I had made a decision which carried with it things that I could not articulate at the time. I had made the choice instinctively, and only later had given it meaning. The trip had never been billed in my mind as an adventure in the sense of something to be proved. And it struck me then that the most difficult things has 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,m one really cold act to change and control one's life;and the procedure, the process, was its own reward. "

― Robyn Davidson , Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

12 " Why did people circle one another, consumed with either fear or envy, when all the they were fearing or envying was illusion? Why did they build psychological fortresses and barriers around themselves that would take a Ph.D. in safe-cracking to get through, which even they could not penetrate from the inside? And once again I compared European society with Aboriginal. The one so archetypally paranoid, grasping, destructive, the other so sane. I didn't want ever to leave this desert. I knew that I would forget. "

― Robyn Davidson , Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

13 " ...desert time refused to structure itself. It preferred instead to flow in curlicues, vortices and tunnels,... "

― Robyn Davidson , Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

14 " And I recognized then the process by which I had always attempted difficult things. I had simply not allowed myself to think of the consequences, but had closed my eyes, jumped in, and before I knew where I was, it was impossible to renege. I was basically a dreadful coward, I knew that about myself. The only way I could overcome this was to trick myself with that other self, who lived in dream and fantasy and who was annoyingly lackadaisical and unpractical. All passion, no sense, no order, no instinct for self-preservation. That’s what I had done, and now that cowardly self had discovered an unburnt bridge by which to return to the past. As Renata Adler writes in Speedboat: I think when you are truly stuck, when you have stood still in the same spot for too long, you throw a grenade in exactly the spot you were standing in, and jump, and pray. It is the momentum of last resort. "

― Robyn Davidson , Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

15 " Camel trips, as I suspected all along, and as I was about to have confirmed, do not being or end: they mere change form. "

― Robyn Davidson , Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

16 " I had rediscovered people in my past and come to terms with my feelings towards them. I had learnt what love was. That love wanted the best possible for those you cared for even if that excluded yourself. That before, I had wanted to possess people without loving them, and now I could love them and wish them the best without needing them. "

― Robyn Davidson , Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

17 " FOR THE NEXT TWO DAYS Eddie and I walked together, we played charades trying to communicate and fell into fits of hysteria at each other’s antics. We stalked rabbits and missed, picked bush foods and generally had a good time. He was sheer pleasure to be with, exuding all those qualities typical of old Aboriginal people — strength, warmth, self-possession, wit, and a kind of rootedness, a substantiality that immediately commanded respect. "

― Robyn Davidson , Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

18 " That to be free one needs constant and unrelenting vigilance over one’s weaknesses. A vigilance which requires a moral energy most of us are incapable of manufacturing. We relax back into the moulds of habit. They are secure, they bind us and keep us contained at the expense of freedom. To break the moulds, to be heedless of the seductions of security is an impossible struggle, but one of the few that count. To be free is to learn, to test yourself constantly, to gamble. It is not safe. I had learnt to use my fears as stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks, and best of all I had learnt to laugh. "

― Robyn Davidson , Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

19 " The world is a dangerous place for little girls. Besides, little girls are more fragile, more delicate, more brittle than little boys. ‘Watch out, be careful, watch.’ ‘Don’t climb trees, don’t dirty your dress, don’t accept lifts from strange men. Listen but don’t learn, you won’t need it.’ And so the snail’s antennae grow, watching for this, looking for that, the underneath of things. The threat. And so she wastes so much of her energy, seeking to break those circuits, to push up the millions of tiny thumbs that have tried to quelch energy and creativity and strength and self-confidence; that have so effectively caused her to build fences against possibility, daring; that have so effectively kept her imprisoned inside her notions of self-worthlessness. And "

― Robyn Davidson , Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

20 " And here I was at the end of my trip, with everything just as fuzzy and unreal as the beginning. It was easier for me to see myself in Rick's lens, riding down to the beach in that cliched sunset, just as it was easier for me to stand with my friends and wave goodbye to the loopy woman with the camels, the itching smell of the dust around us, and in our eyes the feat that we had left so much unsaid. There was an unpronounceable joy and an aching sadness to it. It had all happened too suddenly. I didn't believe this was the end at all. There must be some mistake. Someone had just robbed me of a couple of month in there somewhere. There was not so much an anticlimactic quality about the arrival at the ocean, as the overwhelming feeling that I had somehow misplaced the penultimate scene. "

― Robyn Davidson , Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback