Mike Novacek, Mark A. Norell

Desert scape: flat horizons, mountains protruding like islands. Dust devils, (called huiijs by the Mongolians ) track across the vast valleys. And here we are again searching for red sandstones that entomb great fossils. It is now as hot as it is supposed to be. The inferno of the lowest parts of the Gobi gives us recordings of 103° in the shade. Many of the rocks are black forming a pavement. Like Phoenix when the air cools, the heat radiates from below rather than above. We feel a little giddy and lightheaded in the heat. On this scale we search for fossil beds with sharp-eyed binoculars. Our expedition needs to invest heavily in the finest optics in the world. "Look over there, those beds are reddish." But a one hour drive gets us to rocks that don't look right. They're too soft, the wrong color, and yield only a few turtle shards. Remember this isn't the autobahn, not even the 605, nor Baja Highway 1-- we creep at an average speed of 10 klicks (kilometers) per hour.

There is some pleasurable ennui to the day. The caravan of heavy trucks, a gasoline tanker, and jeeps, stops. Then a few jeeps go off to scout a remote red line on the horizon. Some of us wait in the heat, huddling like refugees under the cool underframe of a Russian military truck. With hours passing by, the finer things of life are sharply defined. Take music for instance. Everyone has a favorite series of songs one Mercedes rings out a Doors extravaganza, another the Dead, another, an offering by "Deadbolt", a clown-murder surf band from San Diego. The group seems to converge on a song by Soul Asylum that has particular relevance to our wanderings today in the dust and the heat:

Runaway train never going back
Wrong way on a one way track.

No matter what plays, from Louis Armstrong to the Sex Pistols, lyrics take on new meaning. We go home with a different take on music-- even Lou Reed doesn't remind us of New York, but rather some hot place on a deserted part of the planet.

In the afternoon we take a look at a new place. We take three jeeps up through a mountain pass to examine a tortuously folded set of rocks. We are confronted by a cascade of water, a flash flood, dissecting the landscape like a muddy Colorado. What is the source of this torrent? Strange events. Unexplainable events. Poltergeists at work. The water advances over a mile before our return, a muddy front overtaking everything, not a cloud in the sky.

We struggle southwestward along a low wash. The temperature has dropped to 99° but the Gas Tanker is overheating. We finally give up and camp. Rancid sheep haunches are hauled out. We cut away the maggots and the green parts, fry it in an oil the temperature of a supernova and bury and roll it in shaslik (a coriander based mixture of spices, indigenous to central Asia). The sun dies in a fury of heat frenzied clouds over Longin Mountain. The evening is warm and sultry, Like a Caribbean beach, although, as Jim Clark notes, the only insects are in the meat. This is a beautiful place. We have thirty kilometers to go tomorrow, as the griffin flies to Kheerman Tsav, then a hard drive to Naran Bulak. We hope that we will be spending tomorrow night in Naran Bulak, Sunshine Spring-- a green wet spot, loved by caravaners, explorers, and locals-- smack in the middle of the Gobi.

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