Leigh Marjamaa
The Negev Desert

Imagine yourself prostrate on top of a mountain with nothing for 100 miles [161 kilometers] but rolling sand. Morning in the Negev Desert is silent, and your skin is cool like the soft shale rocks forming the horizon. Wind-licked boulders entomb your sleeping body as the green light of dawn seeps in through rested lids; slowly your surface temperature begins to stabilize. Distant conical mounds of shale and dunes of sand form the gentle lines of the wilderness. It’s a place of living myths. In the gloaming one can almost see the midnight rides of so many caravans—of Moses in the wilderness and T.E. Lawrence’s traveling across this same morning land. Today it is austere, empty.

As you gaze around this morning on the mountain there is no legend, no nomad, no army...just you. Suddenly green dawn flashes to orange, then burns hotter, toward white, and you begin your long descent toward the fragrant cardamom-coffee delights of your Bedouin hosts. As you turn west, 1,000 feet [305 meters] below your knapsack, six camels stand sleeping outside a black wool tent down in the quiet nomadic camp, a tiny fibrous caravan from a miniature set. But looking back toward the rising sun, it is easy to wish that you could turn away from those last sisal threads of rough civilization, and continue walking into the vast bright open.

Leigh Marjamma is an associate researcher at TRAVELER.