In this very large coffee table book, beautiful photographs provided by National Geographic photographer Rick Smolan are situated alongside excerpts from Robyn Davidson's travel memoir, Tracks. At first I did not intend to read this book in its entirety. I planned to only flip through it and look at the pretty pictures as a way to start thinking about Australia, which I will be visiting in the fall. As I read the captions, however, I began to be fascinated by this amazing journey this woman took across the outback and ended up reading it quickly in its entirety.

Robyn Davidson's journey began in Alice Springs and lead her across the Australian desert all the way to the ocean. She made the journey with her four camels and her dog. It was a journey she felt she needed to take, for reasons that were deep rooted and not even fully known to herself. In one of her opening paragraphs, she wrote:

"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."

Davidson faced innumerable challenges in simply preparing for this trip, one of which being what she called "the cult of maschismo" that exists in Australia. Because no white men had ever been able to make the journey she was about to undertake, no one believed that a woman would be able to do it. So she met incredible resistance in trying to just get the training to work with camels and to earn the money to fund her journey.

The challenge of money was eventually solved when she received funding from National Geographic. It was a decision she immediately regretted. While she would not be able to make the journey without this funding, Davidson felt like a sell out. Now a photographer would be joining her at points of her trip, therefore eliminating the solitude she had hoped for (having a photographer around at times also created problems with the Aborigines, whom she also hoped to connect with).

Davidson, like the Aborigines, makes a strong distinction between tourists and travelers. Tourists being the kind of people who suck up the scenery, are glued to their cameras, and are often rude. Tourists don't care for the people or the cultures they are disrupting. While a traveler is respectful. This notion can be a little confronting to some readers, I'm sure. It just made me sad and made me think about how I travel and behave when I'm outside of the U.S.

Tied into this is the discussion of how the Aboriginal culture has been abused, made quaint by news and photographers, while many of those same news outlets did not care what was actually happening to these people -- how their culture was slipping away and how they keep getting relegated to worse and worse lands.

Whether or not you agree with her political views, at least Davidson makes you think on multiple levels and I would love to have some discussions with someone who has read this book.

I felt deeply for Davidson on her journey. Her writing allows you to connect with her and her experience, bringing you right down into the dust of the desert with her. I came to love the contradictory nature of her emotional experience and how she could swing from perfect bliss of the moment to wanting to throttle some tourist. She's funny and real and doesn't (seem to) pretend to be anything other than herself.

The only major flaw of From Alice to Ocean, as far as I'm concerned, was that is was merely the abstracts from Tracks, necessitating the need to go read the full story and get more details of the journey. However, I would argue that From Alice to Ocean is an excellent companion to the story. One of the interesting things about it was the way the photographs told a completely different story from the text. At times Davidson railed against the the photographer in her writing, hating having him there, although keeping quiet because he's a nice guys. Also, the pictures are often a lie, painting a beautiful, though highly romantic notion of the journey that was contrary to her actual experience. (Yet another layer to the possible discussions one could have about this book.)

This emotionally and intellectually complex, but ultimately fulfilling, journey is well worth a read. ( )

This book with two accompanying CDs was a new concept when released in '92. It is, nevertheless, in content as old as the dream journeys of native peoples. The journey was that of a young woman, mostly along, across a good half of Australia, in some of the roughest country.