Most of us never come anywhere near testing our own limits. Most of us are content with the fact that we’ve never been forced to stretch our own physical and mental abilities to stay alive. Many of us consider ourselves blessed to be able to say as much.
What then to make of the peculiar sort of person who chooses to attempt an act that most consider crazy?
In 1975, 25-year-old Robyn Davidson traveled to Alice Springs, in the heart of Australia hot and dry Red Centre. Her intention was to learn to tame and train a few of the continent’s thousands of wild camels to aid her plan of walking 1,700 miles through the harsh desert of Western Australia to the Indian Ocean.
In director John Curran’s film adaptation of Davidson’s subsequent book about the journey, Tracks, she is played by Mia Wasikowska. The actress projects the bohemian beauty and strength you’d expect from someone unwaveringly dead-set on such a harebrained scheme.
Davidson wanted to, as Wasikowska’s early voiceover explains, cast off the “self-indulgent malaise” of her generation. She’d been drifting from job to job, place to place, never feeling entirely at home anywhere. She’s drawn to the “purity” of the desert.
Though (obviously) a loner who wants to accomplish this feat on her own, she reluctantly writes to National Geographic magazine in hopes that they’ll provide funding for the supplies she’ll need on her trip. Their condition is that a photographer, Rick (Adam Driver), meet up with her several times along the way to document her experience for the article she has agreed to write.
Tracks is a beautifully shot movie that unfolds gently through moments of heartbreak, humor, and joy. Even during the more trying episodes of her six months of walking mostly alone (except for the company of her four camels and a dog), when she’s despondent and on the verge of giving up, it’s hard not to envy her.
Despite the many hardships she faces, Davidson’s expedition strips everything down to the simplicity of the basics of daily survival and the need to keep putting one foot in front of the other. She’s gotten off the treadmill of the ruts and routines of modern, civilized life and given herself the freedom to just keep moving.
Would most of us rather still maintain the status quo in exchange for having a comfortable bed to sleep in and a filling meal each night? Of course, but adventures like Davidson’s are a useful reminder that there are alternatives.
