his head in swoon, a footstrike slips and lo!
a smoking body falls on searing hills.
he struggles up then quits the deed. and so
the shifting sands have broken this man's will.
~ Trials of the Sah'arah
Tonight around one a.m. I passed by my dune for the third time. In the face of such evidence even a crazy man could not help but realize that he was continually retracing his own steps. I stopped myself, then and there deciding that I would quit my wandering. Though I knew the desert had killed me, in my spite I would not give it its final satisfaction. Doubtless, it wanted to see me lurch about as a madman till my final hour, wasting myself faster and faster as the craze set in, all until the point where I lay spent and dead on the burning sand, my body waiting the short time to be crumbled to dust and united with his desert brethren. Well, I would not do it. The desert was to be my hangman, indeed the noose was already set, but it would never be my master.
I stepped off of my friend camel and laid down. He was much surprised that at this point in the night, not having even been half of a normal night's march, he was being rested and pet. I do not think, though, that he was opposed to the idea. I myself was feeling better than I had in a month. The mental strain of pathfinding and rationing food and drink was off of me, and I allowed myself both to relax and eat my fill. I had accepted death.
I have now been sitting for around three hours, alternately dozing and enjoying the unusual coolness of this night's air. A thought has just entered my head as I put the finishing touches on this journal entry: until this point, I had never considered scaling the accursed mountain. My thought had always been that the effort and time to do so would not profit one who had so little energy and supplies. But what are those now? Nothing. I do not know what compels me, but I desire to summit this dune. Well, I have nothing if not a free day tomorrow's night, and I think that a tall dune will suit me as a grave much the same as a short one should.
12 August, 1531
Sahara Desert, Northern Africa
A lowly bedouin and his friend camel
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