Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25128
Lichen and algae soak up the thin water from the scorched land- precious gems that take years to grow millimeters. There's the Algerian sand lizard and the ever-darting Berber skink. One morning we found fennec tracks. The sly, nocturnal desert fox had run straight past our camp. They say that in the early spr"lng a lake, the Oayet Srji, forms along the edge of the vi Ilage of Merzouga attracti ng hordes of pink flamingos to its broth. Now it is autumn, the dunes are dry, the rain months away. Riding sand dunes is a game of steepness and grade, If the grade doesn't push the black diamond range the board doesn't go- or doesn't go fast enough to enable you to turn. When you can't turn, you can't stop and when you can't stop, you get sand in every orifice. Brett and Jake had sand boarded before on scree in the US. They rode smooth, sweeping lines, a hint of sand spray coming off their tails, sunlight flitting across the boards. But I didn't have their experience. My lines were jagged, awkward. The very first time I tried to stand up and get a little momentum going, just enough so I could spin my board and not have to ride fakie , I failed and the board's rail took a chunk out of my forearm. I stood and rode and fell and tumbled. Sand packed in. Brett and Jake had good old-fash ioned strap-in bindings, the kind that don't clog with sand, something a professional would have foreseen. Simon and I had newer gear, tremendous gear, sharp edges and step-in bindings. The only thing was, metal and sand don't mix. Step-in bindings don't hold up. By the middle of the second day, my bindings were sand-clogged. Jackson Browne's song begins: "But you said Morocco and you made me smile. And it hasn't been that easy for a long, long wh i Ie." And while the lyrics might not work well in print, they still manage to edge towards the feeling, and,the feeling is damn hard to describe. The feeling is part of the mystery and mystery is everything in thiS country. On the last evening of the last day, after searching for that ride and that photograph, after countless hours hiking through the desert and camping under a sky wider than any in California, after subjecting everyone within hearing distance to my sloppy rendition of a dim memory of a song from long ago, we came to the last run . Actually, we came to the moment before the last run. We were perched atop the highest sand dune in Morocco- perhaps the highest sand dune in all the world. Below us we could just make out the edge of a giant Berber tent, the mainstay of our camp. Nearby was a cooki ng fire and soon, atop that fire, would be a pot of tea. The sun had almost set, its orange wash lingering on a far shore. This was when we saw them, a herd of wild camels crossing the peak of a distant sand dune in the middle of an ocean of dunes. They were slow-moving, fluid across the sand that cost us so much sweat, their silhouettes pressed agai nst the horizon. On the way down, after the camels had gone and the sun had followed, Jake executed a perfect front flip. His body turned in on itself, a neat, clean circle . He had never tried one before, not on sand, and he did it perfectly. Before I went to Morocco, I always thought of the desert in Paul Bowles' terms. The skinny, aged, mythological literary pillar of Moroccan exile died in his bed in his room in Tangier. Though we didn't know it at the time, he died the same week we were there. Once he wrote, "She wants the kind of love that will make her unhappy." That is what I think when I think of the Sahara, that and those camels. That, and a song which won't quit and a country which won't let it. •