In possibly the best movie of all time, there is an iconic scene in which a glossy-eyed Tim Robbins muses to Morgan Freeman about a “warm place with no memory,” upon which the Pacific Ocean becomes the antithetic symbol of Shawshank Prison – a place of deep healing that can reconcile something fundamentally disconnected within the soul of the most broken of men.
You could say that, for me, the Sahara Desert is my warm place with no memory. Desert has always been a loaded symbol for me personally – the place where God led his people from captivity as a pillar of cloud by day and as a pillar of fire by night, the place where the Holy Spirit led the Savior to face the Devil, a place of countless exotic stories for a young boy growing up in a suburb in America.
And Great Sand Sea fulfills all expectations. After driving in open sand from spring to spring in the expanse of desert, lingering at each to take a swim in the cool freshwater and have the baby fish nibble at our skin, and stopping also in an archeological site to marvel at ancient life once abundant among the dunes, we drove to our campsite as the sun set beyond the expanse. After dinner and downtime, I opted to take my sleeping bag and lay out alone in the middle of the desert, a ways from the campsite.
Few things can compare to falling asleep to the coastline of Alexandria, but the Sahara sufficiently trumped it. Though I had slept little the night before and spent the entire day exploring, I couldn’t help but force my eyes to stay open a while longer, listening closely for the sounds of desert wildlife and staring at the stars, which I had never seen so clearly in my life. And throughout the night I found that though surprisingly chilly winds would nudge me awake from time to time, when I looked up above me, I couldn’t help but be constantly amazed.
I woke up early enough to walk further out into the desert to watch the sun rise, which I did from a sufficiently high dune. And I cannot express adequately what it felt like, watching the sun rise over wave after wave of beige, listening to I Will Exalt You and His Glory Appears by Hillsong Live. Running my hands through the sand, I prayed some words of thanks and amazement. If only every morning could be like this, I thought.
