True Grit

I shield my eyes from the blinding sun reflecting off once fertile grounds. I gaze over the adjacent Crescent Moon Lake in the middle of the Gobi Desert’s Ming Sha Sand Dunes, a fresh water source that has persisted for over 2000 years among the shifting sands. Its water levels dropping from the area’s onslaught of human activity – destroying the lake, a task millennia in the sands have failed to do but years of modern human encroachment have. Surveying beyond, sporadic gusts of wind blow up mini sandstorms that pockmark the terrain.
These ingredients permeate desert culture: sands of eroded minerals – a tan seasoning seeping into crevices & dishes, steeped in time & surroundings – & ground water, life’s nectar evaporating under human activity.
Baking, I stand atop a sand dune after an arduous trek up this panorama towering hundreds of metres. Trekkers can choose routes to the base lower down the slope, but only those with nerve reach the summit. Prevailing to the top rewards wheezers with vistas & silence, I savour the sweet dessert of solitude before tilting forward & my senses are blurred.
The wooden lunch tray seat with a rudimentary seatbelt looped through 2 slits on either side strap me in as I toboggan down at 60km/hr. The gaudy, crumbling, sun-subdued rainbow-hued tray bumps down, throwing up ochre debris. My eyelids rapid-fire to keep out burning sands whipping at me, heaped on like salt, flesh exfoliated & rubbed raw. A gasp fills my mouth with grit & grain, burning my tongue. All too quickly, the death-trap stops short of camel dung littering the ground.
Parched from muffled screams & mouthfuls of sand blasted in my throat, I rinse with water. Mud sloshes in my mouth, dribbling down my chin & seeping down my throat. The gritty taste of earth quells my thirst as I relish what millions of others have for millennia, this abrasive kernel choking its people, pervading the desert culture.
Murky rain pours as the camels & I spit sand back onto the drought lands.