I see the desert as a fantastic lesson in modernity. First because there is no one, and the only individuals you come across allow you to see nothing but their eyes. And you are far away from people in only a very short period of time; people are far away at four meters distance. The environment is on an even footing with man. Perhaps man is slightly smaller. This is part of the environment, just as a tree or a stone is. Man is not predominant or dominant. The desert is a place where you have to waste time; you have to deserve the place you have in the desert.
-Raymond Depardon, from “The Desert”, Fondation Cartier, Paris
It is true that time and distance bend in unusual ways in the desert. To see a lone rider approach our group small as an ant and then become gradually larger until he is our size seems to take only a bit of time when you don’t know who he is or might be. If he is a rider you do know, say one of the drovers sent to an out-of-the-way well in order to fill water skins, and you are thirsty and longing for his return, it seems to take much longer.
Waiting for someone to approach from afar on a flat horizon line, anticipating for example either the water a known person is known to bring, or maybe the unknown news an unknown person might bring, is not a waste of time. Anticipating something new, anything new, is welcome in an empty place of sand and gravel and sun. Resupplying water for a delayed round of tea-making, or getting news for palaver even if in a mostly unintelligible language, are some of my best memories of those forty days. Because they made a difference to what otherwise would have been another of the same kind of day.
