Hollywood had taught me to think of the Sahara as an immense waste of endless sand dunes, unbearably hot by day and freezing cold at night, without rainfall or water, except on a few oases, which I visualized as inviting blue ponds surrounded by resplendent gardens in the midst of an eternal desert whose life was unchanged and unchanging. These misconceptions were dispelled within two days after I met her: The only aspect of my Sahara vision that proved to be valid was “immense.”
The flowing Panavision dunes occupy only 15 percent of the Sahara, concentrated in two or three areas. Most of the Sahara that we saw was an arid steppe, a low hard-packed plateau of gravel, sand, rocks, and some scrub grass. The rest is remarkably varied: It has massive mountains, high plateaus, volcanic formations, dried river beds, shadowy valleys, depressed salt basins, wind-eroded hills and sparse plain. And it was far from worthless: Oil, gas, coal, iron, copper, gold, tin, tungsten and manganese had recently been found there and were being exploited. Nor did we find the daytime desert unbearably hot. Though the temperature went over 90 before noon and kept climbing, the heat was by no means intolerable, because the air was so devoid of moisture and in such constant motion that our perspiration evaporated instantly, keeping us cool and dry. We did require salt pills and a constant intake of water and we had to avoid heavy foods, but as long as we stuck to this regimen, the Sahara was not unpleasant. It did cool quickly once the sun went down, but it never dropped below 45 degrees.
We also learned that the Sahara had ample water, if you knew where to look, and received rain during winter, with some parts getting four inches—hardly enough to sustain agriculture, but sufficient to enable dormant seeds to germinate, dotting the desert with patches of green and bursts of bloom. The Sahara has no conventional lakes or rivers; they couldn’t survive because the hot dry air can evaporate surface water to a depth of thirteen feet in a year.
But below the surface, there’s another world. Fed by millennia of runoff from the Atlas Mountains and underground streams trapped in layers of cretaceous mantle rock, the realm beneath the sand is awash with sufficient water for centuries, if not tapped and drawn down profligately. Some aquifers rose to the surface centuries ago, as springs and pools, to create the oases, but most of the waters lay unknown and unused until around 1950, when geologists discovered and tapped them. Along our route south, the water table was so close to the surface that we found functioning wells whose water was less than 50 feet down. Though we were never sure of the rules and customs, the wells seemed to be available to any thirsty traveller, with a pulley and a goatskin container or bucket ready and waiting, never any fences or No Trespassing signs.
Because we all drank insatiably—every other hour draining our personal quart-size Thermos bottles and the pair of two-gallon jugs we shared—we found it necessary to stop every 30 miles or so to fill up, yet never lacked for a waiting well. Farther south, in the heart of the desert, the wells were fewer and deeper, but adequate for us. [Surveys made in the 60s concluded that all the wells, springs, and irrigation ditches in the entire Sahara were consuming its water at one fourth the rate it flowed in. But that balance has been upset in recent years, and lives will be endangered if conservation does not become a priority.]
Even more at odds with my idealized view were the oases, which I’d envisioned as photogenic pools surrounded by luxurious gardens. From the distance they seemed to live up to that reputation: Through the clear desert air we could see the brilliant green tops of the palm trees. But as we drew closer the vision faded. Little was green at eye-level: brown tree trunks and brownish-red mud and rocks, and ugly houses with barbed wire around struggling gardens.
Many younger inhabitants refuse to accept this way of life. Hearing about the wonders of modern science and industry, able to catch a truck ride and exit the desert in a few days, hundreds of young men had been heading for the coastal cities to find a better life, leaving the old people behind to tend the dying gardens and crumbling houses.
The other upholders of the old way of life, the nomads, were also undergoing a major transformation and may become people of the past because the mid-century arrival of the truck diminished the size and importance of their caravan trade, as did the depletion of the desert gold mines, the mining of cheap salt in Europe, and the decline of the ostrich-feather trade.
The powerful nomad tribes were beginning to break up. Many were abandoning their obsolescent traditions, settling in oases, buying some date palms and cereal seeds, venturing into the formerly shunned occupation of agriculture. They’d been compelled to join the revolution that we saw coming to the Sahara, which was just beginning to be drilled by oil rigs, crossed by improved roads, bisected by pipelines, straddled by air strips, carved by mines, and sucked by gushing water pumps. This would bring drastic, and not always desirable, changes to the Sahara in the decades ahead, and I felt fortunate that I first saw her while she was still awesome and proud and not yet conquered.
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Albert Podell has been an editor at Playboy and three national outdoor magazines and has written more than 250 freelance articles. From Around the World in 50 Years: My Adventure to Every Country on Earth by Albert Podell. Copyright © 2015 by the author and reprinted by permission of Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, LLC. |
