After two and a half months, the time has come to write once again about my travels. A lot has happened between Dresden and Today, but I'm going to put a pin in that for now.
Today, I want to talk about sand.
I spent a good few hours last Thursday on the beach in San Diego, California. The sand was soft, dotted with the occasional local sunbather, and the water was surprisingly warm for the Pacific.
There was some pretty interesting people watching on that particular beach, on that particular day. A few guys digging a big hole in the sand. A couple with crayon-bright hair in matching yellow and orange. And... wait, what? A pair of people dragging sacks around on the sand in big circles around a plastic storage tub. Huh? As soon as I saw them, I was mesmerized. What were they doing? I peered at them through my sunglasses, trying to make out what was going on. They had something in these sacks, and were dragging it around on the sand, then carrying the sack with a dark ring on the bottom of it and brushing something off into the tub. Repeat. I decided they were extracting the dark particles from the sand with magnets, possibly as part of some sort of scientific experiment. I was half right - we went to talk to them, and it turns out the sacks were pillow cases, and the fancy equipment in them were just blown out car speakers they got for free from an auto parts store. They were collecting magnetic sand, which they said had iridium and radium attached to it (on this beach) and it could be used to purify water, or smelted to separate the precious metals. I decided to compare it to searching for buried treasure in the sand with a metal detector, only way cooler.
Over the weekend I drove to Tucson for a birthday event, which included towers of beer taller than a toddler and dangerous amounts of bean dip, as well as a visit to the Tucson zoo to feed a giraffe carrot sticks.
The sand-related part happened (get excited) at NIGHT! We went on a night hike in one of the many parks surrounding the city. I consider this to be the "pretty" kind of desert, the kind with rocky hills and canyons and growing things like cacti and mesquite trees and even a little stream. The moon came up and was so bright it outdid my headlamp, and I could see my shadow clearly on the white, white sand. The wash we walked along shone so brightly in the moonlight, and we were surrounded by those great nighttime noises the bugs and the frogs and the air like to make. It was pretty fantastic.
Along the 8 freeway, which connects San Diego and Tucson, there is a section where one is surrounded on both sides by these massive, beautiful sand dunes. I love the way the wind blows little rippling lines down the slopes, visible even from a speeding car.
So, basically, sand not only featured prevalently in my week, it's also kind of awesome.
Tune in again for my REWIND series, where I fill in the big blank of the past few months.
No comments:
Post a Comment