Somewhere between Manila and Amsterdam, the plane slipped into evening and crossed the Gobi Desert. I stared down for more than an hour and still we had not passed it. Below stretched a vastness that seemed unending, an ocean of earth in ochres and greys, ridges and plains brushed by the last light of day. From above it appeared empty, yet I could not help but wonder about the lives being lived down there.
I thought of families in their gers, the round felt dwellings scattered like white shells across the land. I imagined them gathered around a stove as the cold pressed in, sharing food, telling stories, perhaps tending to worries that were not so different from mine: the health of loved ones, the future of children, the struggle to endure. Their joys and anxieties seemed no less real for being tucked away in such remoteness.
What would silence sound like in the depth of night, broken only by the wind brushing at the canvas? To wake and hear nothing, no traffic, no hum of machines, not even the rustle of leaves. Just the stillness of creation itself. Perhaps it is in such silence that the soul becomes attuned to something greater, something that modern life has smothered.
And then, the sky. I envied them that. To look up from the dark of the Gobi and see the heavens in their fullness, a Milky Way unbroken, stars uncountable, so thick they must feel like a river flowing overhead. To live beneath such a sky each night is to live close to the infinite, to be reminded that we are small, passing, yet also deeply connected to the eternal and the creator.
As I sat in my seat high above, I found myself longing for that simplicity, that communion with earth and sky. For the desert dwellers, it is a given. For me, it was a glimpse, a yearning awakened by the view from thirty thousand feet. And whilst I envy them, they look up at me and wonder what cultures I have left and what cultures I belong to. One day, yes one day, we will hopefully meet in that grand time that Job, the Biblical character, called The Renewal.
“I wish you would hide me in the grave and forget me there until your anger has passed.
Over the Gobi at Dusk
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