Mark Norell

In one of my favorite travel stories fittingly titled The Sorrows of Travel, Ed Abbey talks about how each journey is different but somehow the same, how journeys all have starts and finishes, how beginings are filled with anticipation, and the ends exhausting and sad no matter how much you miss home. So it was today that we left Ukhaa Tolgod, taking the morning to carefully pack our precious specimens for the long journey across Zos Pass, into the valley to the north, then turn right and skirt the singing sands toward our next destination, near the locality of Udan Sayr.

Even though we have more collecting to do on this trip, and most of us have over a week left in the desert, it is with remorse that we leave Ukhaa. It is not that we donÍt miss our loved ones at home (we do.) Certainly, if idle conversation is a barometer, we crave a few of the amenities that populace brings. A cold beer, a shower to transform my matted dreadlocks into something that resembles hair, and a plate of sushi and fresh vegetables all blink into my mind. Perhaps my truck mates, would add a bath to this list.

Nevertheless, our camp at Ukhaa is familiar -- it is a sort of home for us during July since 1993. It is a place where our commune, populated by a core of regulars and first time Tolgodians lives as a sort of micro city, for a few weeks each year. Assembling our caravan, snorting the heavy exhaust fumes of idling trucks, we push up the hill and away from our camp. Each of us looks out the windows at the line of red cliffs for a quick glance before they instantly disappear and are reclaimed by horses, camels, hedgehogs and jerboas.

There are places we have made our triumphs, the individual spots where our best specimens were collected. Some of these holes in the ground have disappeared as the same erosional forces which expose fossils reclaim our intrusions into the natural landscape of Ukhaa. There are places where we have had a lot of fun-- enjoying great meals, magnificent sunsets and sandstorms, and celebrating the fossil riches of which we have been lucky enough to discover.

All of this is part of our own oral history of this place, the sort of banter that goes on during long drives or days spent cowering in the back of a heavy truck waiting for the rain to stop. Of course we talk about the usual stuff too (you can use your imaginations, active imaginations, about what that is- remember we live pretty primal lives out here). Nevertheless the same stupid stories (Luis Chiappe the poet, the notorious Elvis joke, etc., etc., and etc.) are told and embellished incessantly, year after year. We have some fresh material for next year -- Peter Langone the poet, etc., etc., and etc.

But now we are on the road -- just north of the singing sands which were illuminated this evening in opaque orange post sandstorm light. We did well today, covering nearly 150 km through mountain passes, over dried lake beds, through sand dunes, stopping at an unnamed plot along the sort of road that can easily be confused with a camel track. Compared to Ukhaa, topography is sparse, and instead of soft sand to sleep on the ground is a gravel pit of wind polished pebbles. But it is only a rest stop on our way eastward, toward the Flaming cliffs, toward Ulaan Baatar, toward home.

« Previous Day | Dispatches Home | Next Day »