Spain/Morocco: The Sahara
The Sahara at night is probably the strangest place I’ve ever been. It’s a space that you might even describe as purgatorial. We’re used to landscapes with definite beginnings and endings, demarcations that make the land something we can process. We’re used to precision, representations of place that are recognizable. The sands not only continue endlessly, but they’re in constant flux, subject to the wind and other disturbances, our own footprints included. A group of us decided to go exploring once the sun had set, burying our feet in the sands, half falling down steep dunes. Of course, we really had no means of navigation, besides the noise of the faint drumming from the camp we could hear in the distance. We were all waiting for our eyes to adjust to the darkness, but they never quite made the transition. Honestly, we weren’t must better than lost children, staring up at stars we weren’t accustomed to seeing, slipping up and down the fluid inclines.
We looked up for the Milky Way after the moon finally descended. There have been few times I’ve seen stars like that, layered on top of the dunes. It seemed insane, and surreal, and I’d never felt more like a traveler. It was this feeling of humility, created from the wonder and the sense of dependency we’ve all grown to accept throughout this trip. We’d all done our own figurative version of stumbling through the dark, feeling this unusual sense of helplessness that comes with unfamiliarity throughout our travels in Morocco. The Saharan night was probably the perfect visual representation.
The morning was decidedly different. I hadn’t slept much, and had spent too much time staring at the sky instead. The wind was something I’m sure none of us had actually experienced. The sand I had been so fascinated by was everywhere, clinging to my skin and eyelashes, and everything else. I’m trying to come up with a semi-poetic way to describe the camel ride back. It was laughably miserable, the subject of “this is what I did during my study abroad trip,” badge of honor experiences. Once again, I felt the same sense of dependence, the same sense of being pulled forward, for better or worse, by our guide, who calmly led us back to Merzouga, our hotel, and the comforts we had grown accustomed to. I almost wanted a picture of the moment, us tourists wrapped up in scarves we bought on the side of the road somewhere, sunglasses, and last night’s clothes. Though the entire excursion was in almost every way constructed, an artificial means of comfortable exploration, this part felt real, probably because it was so uncomfortable, and so beyond our control. The desert taught me once again, what it meant to be wandering a foreign landscape, and how important it is to allow yourself to have these experiences. Though we slipped down dunes, we were able to see stars we’d never seen before. It’s a bad metaphor I’m sure, and I’m digging a hole for myself here, with all this pretentious language, but it was a reality we all experienced.
There’s a dry sense of humor you might need to have writing travel blogs so you don’t take yourself too seriously while also just letting uncomfortable or ridiculous experiences wash over you. I’ve realized how much consideration you have to have when writing about things that moved or affected you, while in an unfamiliar place. You can’t just write about the place as an extension of your own feelings and problems and sense of awe, and you can’t just write about the place in plain description. It’s the middle of these two extremes of communication that I’m hoping I’ll figure out how to master. For now, I’m still scrubbing sand out of my ears, and looking forward to our later destinations, and trying to figure out what reflection is supposed to mean in the context of a landscape I’ll never fully understand.