…sand in everything…we chewed rice and sand, bread and sand, and drank foul water and sand…my pencil scraped as I attempted to use it…
-The Great Sahara, H.B. Tristram, 1860
Rereading my trail journal from 1984, written with a stubby pencil that I pulled from my valise at every camp stop, I find grains of sand stuck between its spiral bound pages. Day 1, just outside Al-Nahud, the sand is fine and dusty. Day 15, in the Wadi al-Milk, the sand is reddish and clean. Day 23, beside the Nubian Nile, the sand is silty. Day 40, approaching Binban Bahri, the sand is dirty, Egyptian.