Dunes

Thursday, January 27, 2005 4:47 PM

Dune-Walking:

Sometimes when you travel, you find that where you’re going isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Sand dunes do not fall in that category.

I think my general perception of sand dunes was that they were enormous mounds of sand, mostly akin to the beach in L.A., but with funny lines from the wind and a uniform color.

Sand dunes are incredible. Saharan sand dunes that is.

I should note that most of what makes those dunes amazing is the sand.

Saharan sand isn’t like anything you’ll find on a beach anywhere. The grains are infinitely fine. In a light breeze, you’ll only feel the wind on your face. But when you look at your clothes, you’ll realize there’s a slight rusty hue on the upwind edges. And if you lick your lips, there’s a hint of grittiness.

Running your fingers through it is like a mix of satin and silk, but as it runs through your fingers it just disappears. And when you brush your hands off, nothing remains.

All that wonderful softness makes walking through the dunes a trip. Literally. It’s easy to take a fall.

Though I spent hours stumbling over the dunes in light and dark, I never figured out where a dune is soft and hard. You can stroll along as if you’re wearing snowshoes for a bit, then without warning your feet will sink into the laces. Sometimes the crest of a dune is surprisingly firm, sometimes it’ll crumble without warning beneath your feet. And the slightest breeze skims a thin film of sand of the crest of a dune, whisking it up into your face. Fortunately, the wind barely blew when I was there.

The dunes themselves, particularly the Grand Dunes (they get rather huge for a stretch outside of Douz), are positively psychadelic. If you look at them in the sunlight, the unsullied waving lines are dizzying. Every hour, they change dramatically as the shadows shorten and lengthen.

Of course, walking in dunes can be a total pain in the keister. As the sun set, after watching it go down, I headed out of the oasis alone just to walk out into the night. It was absolutely terrifying. It’s like swimming farther out to sea, past the surf, when you’re not in a bay and it’s just the ocean extending out as far as you can see.

I always thought in the ocean I was afraid of sharks or the deepness of the water below me or all sorts of other things. By I don’t think that’s fundamental fear. At the core, it’s about being alone.

There aren’t any wolves in the desert around Ksar Ghilane, nor roaming bandits, nor deadly snakes (at least to my knowledge) or cliffs or quicksand or anything to really jeopardize your safety. And yet I was absolutely petrified when I got more than fifty yards outside the treeline. By the time I was about a mile away, I actually had broken out in a cold sweat and couldn’t stop getting shivers down my spine (it was cold, but not that cold.

I even thought out loud a little bit, just to hear the sound of a voice against the silence. It wasn’t even a deafening silence. Occasionally you’d hear noises from the oasis and there was a distant hum of a generator. There was no breeze at all and the sounds carried for miles. But mostly it was quiet.

And it was incredibly scary, in the same way that it’s scary to lean over the edge of a tall building and think to yourself, “I could throw myself off right now and I would die.”

Moreover, it was maddening to try and walk, particularly when the moon was over your shoulder and the you didn’t have the benefit of shadows to help judge distance. Since most rises in a dune aren’t above the horizon unless you’re down in a trough, I would walk suddenly into a slope. I couldn’t believe how many times I fell. Maddening, but an awesome experience.

The dunes are great. I’ll post pictures as soon as Flickr (the free online host) lets me.

Note: I’m only referring to the Dunes in between Ksar Ghilane and Douz. I can’t claim knowledge of Saharan dunes generally. I will say, though, that it would be miserable to hike at night in the desert. Or in the day. Miserable. I dunno how they did it in all those survival movies that feature people stranded in the middle of the desert.