Tracks: One Woman's Journey Across 1,700 Miles of Australian Outback

I did not perceive at that time that I was allowing myself to get more involved with writing about the trip than the trip itself. It did not dawn on me that already I was beginning to see it as a story for other people, with a beginning and an ending.

Words are the memory twitching after the reality of the dance …

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 we risk not recognizing each other when we return.’

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 mean

the homesickness is for an experience that could in any case never be repeated, and for people and ways of thought whose rightful place is the past. This desert belongs to another ‘now’ and it’s foolish to compare them.

Life’s so joyous, so sad, so ephemeral, so crazy, so meaningless, so goddamn funny.

what’s true in one place is not necessarily true in another.

I think, I hope, that I will always see the obsession with social graces and female modesty for the perverted crippling insanity it really is.

A few of Rick Smolan’s pictures are included in this edition too. I love them unreservedly now. They may have supplanted true memory, but aren’t they wonderful?