Sadly, I'm just about to hit cancel on my flight booking to Alice Springs for the second year in a row.
It's disappointing - but that disappointment made me think about why I was so looking forward to going, and remember why I started doing these trips to Central Australia in the first place.
It's big, it's beautiful, it's raw, it's relevant, it's different, it's lifechanging.
Of course it's different, the landscape and the location are so far from our normal lives. This in itself stirs you up a bit. It does feel very far away here, detached from infrastructure and coverage - you can't help but notice the nature of the place. The vastness of the sky and land suck the air out of you, in a good way, in a wow way. The colours - I remember some fireside pondering about whether the warmth in every conceivable shade of red and ochre and sienna and orange and pink and purple prompt some primordial, very female responses - is it womblike here? Or does it feel like a beating heart, or is it just that you can hear your own heart beat out here? There's often talk about the energy of this place - we need look no further than the art of the People with real connections to this country in order to get a sense of it.
There's more about what we do on an Accompanied Adventure here. Next year.