In every religion I can think of, there exists some variation on the theme of abandoning the settled life and walking one\'s way to godliness.
Her essays have appeared in Granta , the Monthly , the Bulletin and Griffith Review , amongst others..
Her books include Tracks , Desert Places , Quarterly Essay 24: No Fixed Address - Nomads and the Future of the Planet and, as editor, The Picador Book of Journeys and The Best Australian Essays 2009 .
Robyn Davidson is an award-winning writer who has travelled and published widely.
No Fixed Address is part lament, part evocation and part exhilarating speculative journey.
In a time of environmental peril, she argues, the nomadic way with nature still offers valuable lessons.
In this fascinating and moving essay she evokes a vanishing way of life, and notes a paradox: that even as classical nomads are disappearing, hypermobility has become the hallmark of contemporary life.
Robyn Davidson has spent a good part of her life with nomadic cultures.
After many thousands of years, the nomads are disappearing, swept away by modernity.
We walk back to our original condition, to our best selves.
What could this ritual journeying be but symbolic, idealised versions of the foraging life? By taking to the road we free ourselves of baggage, both physical and psychological.
The Hindu Sadhu, leaving behind family and wealth to live as a beggar; the pilgrims of Compostela walking away their sins; the circumambulators of the Buddhist kora; the Hajj.
In every religion I can think of, there exists some variation on the theme of abandoning the settled life and walking one\'s way to godliness
