There is a fine dusting of silt covering me and all of my gear even though I’m inside my tent with the rain fly on. As I move, the silt jumps in motes and fills my nostrils with the smell of flint being struck, the smell of hot silica. The sun has begun to light the side of my tent through gaps in the juniper that keeps caressing my tent in the constant wind.
I wonder how much the landscape has changed overnight with the strong winds that kept waking me as they tried to blow me back to Los Angeles. While the loose sands have moved around noticeably, the landscape has changed little, even if my mind would expect otherwise after the amount of dust I found covering me this morning.
There is so much loose sand and silt here, which makes sense, this was a massive erg for millions of years. An erg, is a vast sand sea or dune sea, there are contemporary examples in Morocco, Algeria, and the Arabian Empty Quarter (the word erg is derived from the Arabic word ‘arq for dune field). During the Jurassic Period, this was a vast dune sea of more than 100,000 sq. miles by current estimates, and while the dunes were eventually stilled and turned into the sandstone seen today, some of it has eroded free from the sandstone dunes and is actively being whipped across the landscape by the winds of this region.
There are occasions in life where I’ve been able to sit and be truly in the moment without, they are usually short and fairly infrequent, life can be chaotic. So, when I do find myself in one of those peaceful moments, devoid from distractions, in a place and space that I find calming, it is wonderful. Wandering through the landscape here, having the moments of vast silence surrounding me, no city noises or tourists clamoring for the iconic photo they have to show their friends, is truly wonderful. Although I love being in the middle of a throng of humanity, feeling the pulse of a city or cultural event, I also love, and need, moments without distractions, and I found it here.
White Pocket sunset time lapse, Vermillion Cliffs National Monument, Arizona, October 2016
Timothy Dahlum 