Doombus Omnibus

Sometimes I want to go to the Sahara and cross it on camelback.
I imagine arriving at the banks of the Niger
after travelling southward from Tangiers
on the ancient gold-trade route, through Algeria and Mali
And then, the Niger.

I imagine this to be a good way to understand the meaning of water.
I want to do this thing.

I've been to one desert -- the Mojave, in the west part of the North American continent. I slept under the stars, whose light was bright enough to read by. Strangely, I don't remember what I was reading that spring, though I remember reading it under the stars. Be that as it may, this experience -- though outstanding in many ways -- is no real preparation for a Saharan crossing. In the Mojave, I had continuous access to an air-conditioned vehicle, which could, on top of being air-conditionable, transport me away quickly in the case of need. The safety net was huge and almost impenetrable.

One day, I left the car on the side of the road and walked into the desert. I wanted to reach "that dune over there," which I estimated to be about 500 yards away. The desert makes it hard to judge distance! "That dune over there" was completly unreachable. I'd brought a liter of water, knowing that once I drank half of it, I would have to turn around. I kept walking and walking, crossing dunes I didn't see when surveying the situation from the side of the road, and still "that dune over there" remained "over there". I was getting no closer. I found some really cool critters in those dunes, and some amazingly hardy prickly plants. Eventually deciding that there really was no dune over there, and that I'd fallen for the oldest trick in the desert book, I shook my head and turned back.

The whole excursion was maybe 90 minutes; yet it had started to mess with my head. What would it be like to really set out? To enter the desert and know that it'll be over a week before you exit it?

It seems that a desert, like an ocean and like the sun and the moon, are immensely powerful, high-energy beings that can't not affect those who live in close contact with them.

And then there are the little bugs that crawl around the sand dunes.