Reading Kelly's post, I was struck by how similar it was to the experience I was thinking about writing on. The time was late last February. Having been studying in Europe I went to Morocco for part of my spring break. I had initially planned on spending my time in Fez with the vague notion that I might take a day trip or two to surrounding attractions. But fortune smiled on my traveling companions and I and we found ourselves offered a discounted trip to and overnight camping stay in the Sahara Desert. We jumped on the opportunity and set off on a trip I will never forget.
From the outset I was floored, Having lived on the east coast my whole life I have never seen a desert of any sort and I was more use to the Appalachian variety of mountains. The eight hour trip there included it all, miles of orchards, mountain forest home to monkeys, high glacial prairie dotted by herds of sheep, rocky desert akin to the American southwest, the great Atlas Mountain range, winding red -walled canyons, palms valleys and finally the ocean of dunes that is the Sahara.
I was literally overwhelmed by the sensory experience, however up until this point we had yet to abandon civilization. A sweeping vista would be interrupted by a cell phone tower. The glacial praire was dotted with shanties belonging to the marginalized and impoverished Berber minority. I don't mean to understate the beauty of what I saw that day but only to emphasize the extent which humans have changed our world.
It was the Sahara that broke the mold. That evening we rode camels into the dunes and watched the sunset. After a dinner prepared by our Berber hosts we setup a small fire. Two young men who take care of the camp ground played drums for us as we asked each other questions about what our respective lives were like (they had never been to a city, seen TV, or gone to school but knew of Bob Marley). I stayed up as late as I could, staring into the vast night sky, appreciating a canvass of stars that one could never see in a developed country. I would describe it as a dark night, but the intensity of the star and moonlight substituted for the dull incandescent glow of a city and cast silhouettes onto the surrounding dunes.
The silence was deafening, there was no high way, no planes, no electric generators, nothing at all but the wind and the sand and occasional grumpy bleat of a camel. That morning my friends and I awoke before the crack of dune, climbed up one of the nearby dunes and huddled together under blankets as the sun rose over a distant ridge of rocks. It was without a doubt the most stunning and unique twenty four hours of my entire life.
I can still feel what it was like to be there as a type down these words. The experience was so visceral, so unlike what the average American experiences in their fast paced technologically obsessed life that I can remember the smallest details of the trip where it's a stretch to remember what I did the two weekends ago. When I compare my story to Kelly's I see a connection in that the experiences were made so profound by the distance from modern civilization.
The absence of the modern is itself a thing of beauty, but it is nearly impossible to find. One must travel to the least hospitable environments on the planet to remove themselves from lands impacted by humans and even then success is not guaranteed (my sunset view from the dunes was briefly interrupted by a land rover speeding across the horizon).
We have profoundly, and in some cases irreversible, changed our planet. We have turned ourselves into living gods. We change the course of rivers, level mountains, clear forests and do so at every increasing rates. Our impact has massively negative consequences for biodiversity, climate stability and ultimately our own well being. We are animals and as much a part of Earth as any other species. We are responsible to mitigate the damage that we have wrought, or as the old cliche goes, "you break it you buy it". We may survive without a healthy bio-sphere made up of myriad diverse species and vast wilderness, but we will loss a part of who we are. Our connection to nature is as important as any social bonds or creature comforts we hold onto and is essential to a healthy state of mind. We were a part of nature but we are becoming its master, I only hope that we learn to be benevolent.
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