Welland - The Desert

OUR GROUP HAD camped in the heart of Egypts Western Desert, close to the Libyan border. In fact, we might have actually been in Libya, for, with the exception of the rare, unexpected, sand-blasted and lonely marker post, the border is lost. I am not by nature an instinctively gregarious individual and, relishing an opportunity for solitude, I wandered off to climb one of the desiccated and rocky hills that ringed the camp. The desert offers solitude in a way unequalled by any other setting on earth with the exception of the polar regions, which are, after all, deserts themselves. It takes a while to escape the sounds of ones companions in the still desert air, but I found a quiet place above a cliff where not only the silence but the view of the landscape was overwhelming.

In the crystal light of the desert day, I viewed the landscape through the eyes of a geologist. Details of the multicoloured rock layers in the flanks of flat-topped tablelands and pyramid-shaped hills held stories of times when this now hyper-arid land was covered by seas; changes in the texture and folds of the intervening dune fields told of the windblown journeys of the sand, funnelled through gaps in the hills, filling the topography, spontaneously forming inexorably moving dunes. Boulders and rubble on the slopes were witness to the source of the sand, the slow but never-ending erosion of the staunch, but ultimately futile, resistance of the cliffs.

Its a problem that geologists have an inherent inability to deflect attention from the contents of a scene, whether its the setting of a movie, a road cut or a glorious panorama that should be experienced simply for itself. But at night all this inevitably changes and in the desert night dramatically so. After dinner, I retraced my steps in the dark to my lookout. But dark is not the word. Although it was only a half-moon, I had no need of my head torch and it seemed as if, even without the half-moon, the light from the stars would have been enough.

Night in the desert is unique. It reveals and reminds us what the rest of the universe really looks like from our humble planet. The Milky Way dazzles. But here I was in the Saharan night, overlooking the same geological landscape that I had enjoyed earlier, but now set out before me in the light of the moon and the galaxies, its colours subdued but still luminous. It was a different place, solitude amplified, silence enveloping, geology irrelevant. The experience of the desert is, essentially, a solitary one, and isolation in the desert night requires taking a measure of oneself. It is no wonder that the great religions, not to mention mystics, ascetics and fanatics, have more often than not emerged from and returned to the desert.

A century ago, Mary Hunter Austin was a prolific and eloquent writer on the deserts of the American southwest and an early enthusiast for the peoples and environments of the Great American Desert. In 1909 she published Lost Borders, in the first chapter of which she wrote:

Out there, where the borders of conscience break down... almost anything might happen; does happen, in fact, though I shall have trouble making you believe it. Out there, where the boundary of soul and sense is as faint as a trail in a sandstorm, I have seen things happen that I did not believe myself.

Out there, in the utter silence of that Saharan night, I sat for I dont know how long and understood intimately what she meant. It suddenly occurred to me that nothing would surprise me there and, despite my non-religious nature, I very clearly and specifically felt that, should God or the Devil or both sit down beside me, then this would not be at all strange or shocking. It was, I suppose, the response that Paul Bowles, writing half a century after Austin but echoing her words, termed the baptism of solitude that the desert provides.

The deserts of the American southwest have provoked a large body of literature and art, to which Mary Austin was one of the first, and rightly celebrated, contributors. Fifty years after her, these lands produced one of the first vociferous environmentalists (some would say eco-terrorists), Edward Abbey. In his most well-known work, Desert Solitaire, Abbey writes:

But the desert is a vast world, an oceanic world, as deep in its way and complex and various as the sea. Language makes a mighty loose net with which to go fishing for simple facts, when facts are infinite... Since you cannot get the desert into a book any more than a fisherman can haul up the sea with his nets, I have tried to create a world of words in which the desert figures more as a medium than as material... evocation has been the goal.

I am no Edward Abbey, but this resonates. I am, after all, a geologist, and this book will contain plenty of material on the desert as a fundamental player in the workings of our planet. But my interest in the desert extends far beyond the science, and it is my hope that this book will also provide an evocation, a celebration, a consideration of our responses to the desert, the idea of the desert. And not only ours, the outsiders, but those of our billion companions for whom the arid lands are home.

There is a Tuareg saying, There are lands full of water for the well-being of the body, and lands full of sand for the well-being of the soul. The desert is a place of contrasts, of extremes, a place of staggering beauty and unimaginable violence, a place where the margins between success and failure, between life and death are slim, a place of timelessness and ephemerality, a place of good and evil. The desert is a place, in reality and in our minds, of tension, of conflict between civilization and the wilderness. Arid lands have always been and continue to be a challenge, both to those who would conquer them and those who would make a living within them. Historically, culturally and politically, the desert has played a leading role in, and not simply provided the stage or the backdrop for, dramas of nations, species and individuals.

The scope of the topic is as vast as its subject. Since I explore it in terrains beyond my own professional expertise, this book can be only a sampler, not an exhaustive treatment. I find myself frustrated by some of my own omissions: for example, the deserts of the polar regions and those beyond our own planet; the constructive role of fire in arid lands and their biodiversity; the impact of desert tourism; and numerous artists, writers and epic journeys. Just as what we dont know about the desert far exceeds what we do know, what is left out far exceeds what is included and what is included is driven by personal fascination. No, you cannot get the desert into a book, but perhaps the following pages will begin to cast what Paul Bowles called the spell of the vast, luminous, silent country.