Free The Way of Wanderlust by Don George

stood on that very peak, looking down on the whole world around us. We had conquered the slippery slope of Half Dome, and we would have much to celebrate that night.
    It seemed symbolic of so many things in life, and I was just beginning to enjoy the light-footed walk back to camp and to feel the success suffuse my body from the top of my head to the tips of my fingers and toes, when Jeremy turned to me and said, “Dad, can we do this again next year?”

Impression: Sunrise at Uluru

    At the beginning of 2001, I left Salon to become Global Travel Editor at Lonely Planet, thrilled to be working with founders Tony and Maureen Wheeler, longtime heroes of mine who had also become close friends. My duties at LP were marvelously multifaceted: editing one literary anthology a year; representing the company to the media and the public as spokesperson; and writing a weekly column for the website. In synch with the company ethos of mindful exploration of the wide-ranging world, I was encouraged to write about anything I wanted and to be as personal as I wanted to be. Soon after joining the company, I was called to the Melbourne headquarters for planning meetings, and I was able to tack on time afterwards to realize one of my longtime dreams: to visit Uluru, the red rock monolith in the Outback, sacred to the Aboriginals. I thought Uluru would be a powerful place, but I had no idea it would affect me as profoundly as it did. When I set out to write about this experience, the account poured out of me in the second person rather than the first person, “you” instead of “I.” This was unusual for me, but looking back, I think that I somehow subconsciously sensed that writing in the second person would allow me to make an intensely personal experience more universal; I wanted to break down the barrier between me and the reader, precisely because my encounter with Uluru had been so deeply subjective, and sacred.

    THE FIRST TIME YOU APPROACH ULURU, the world is still dark. You are rolling through the pre-dawn desert in a minivan when the big black monolith looms suddenly through the side window. It is difficult to judge how far away it is, or how close you are, because the whole world is monotone and flat. Yet you feel the power.
    You have been wary of your preconceptions about the place—the accumulation of iconography and clichés, photographs seen and descriptions read. You don’t want to feel exactly what you know you are supposed to feel. You want a raw connection with the thing. You want to wipe your brain clean, approach the rock like the first human ever to take it in, stumbling incredulously toward it like some red sun-trick on the horizon that doesn’t disappear, but only grows larger and larger until finally all you can do is fall on your knees before it.
    And then you see it, and suddenly your wariness falls away. You are drawn to the dark immensity purely, simply, irresistibly, and with a power that comes from the thing itself and not, as far as you can tell, from your own desire to feel the power. Because it catches you by surprise and because it is such a strong, pit-of-the-stomach pull, you trust it.
    As you get closer, you creak and crane your neck to see as much of it as you can, until you notice—because you’d been so obsessed with seeing the rock, you’d missed this—that you are passing other minivans and buses and dozens upon dozens of people. They wear jeans and warm jackets and hold steaming cups of coffee in their hands; some stamp their feet, others set up their cameras. They have come to see exactly what you have come to see, and you realize there is no point in trying to feel better than them or different from them. You have to share Uluru with them.
    Your minivan parks and you emerge, brushing off the cobwebs of some conversation about kangaroos and dingos. All you want to do is concentrate on the rock itself: Uluru.
    You position yourself at one of the