Arabia Felix…some call it the Yemen–but, why felix? Because it gets rainfall…it is happy. But it is the Empty Quarter, the Rub al Khali, the arid, tropical sand desert that is the true enigma.
There is no Arabia Felix without the Rub Al Khali.
Straddling the Tropic of Cancer and, known in English as The Empty Quarter, the world’s largest contiguous sand desert…has always been, and still is, for humans…an enigma…throughout millennia…a massive natural and cultural enigma.
Wet and dry can describe a lot of situations in life.
Wet: These snow flakes can not wait to reveal their moisture–it flows.
Dry: These dates protect their moisture–they shelter it.
Lots of ways to understand wet landscapes from dry landscapes–the landscape of the humid temperate northern slopes of the Berner Oberland from the arid tropical sands of the Rub Al Khali.
Wet is not equally distributed on the Earth’s surface. Wet and dry have to be managed. Please permit me to offer a tenuously linked digression, just for fun.
In the big picture:
Wet: water, if you just measure surface coverage, makes up 70% of the Earth’s surface or 70% wet. Ignores the underground water table wetness.
Dry: the land surface coverage makes up 30% of the Earth’s surface or 30% dry. Includes the land permanently covered by snow and or ice.
If we generously average the area covered by a standing human, averaging babies and adults, we can say each human covers 0.5 square meter. The number of humans in the world is 7 billion, therefore humans, standing shoulder to shoulder cover much, much less than 1% of the Earth’s surface.
Is there truly a shortage of water on the planet? Plentiful water or water paucity? I wonder…if someone, in the Berner Oberland flushes the toilet with less water, will more dates grow at the edge of the Empty Quarter?
Summary of numbers:
Shortage? Hardly seems like there should be a shortage of wetness does there? Am I on the edge of an enigma here? Or is ‘water shortage’ just another nuanced imperialistic push by the globalizing Western world on others…they won’t find me…I am tucked away in an enigma.
!!!Ah–but the population growth projections! Ah–but the climate change projections! Ah–but the software programs that are without fault or human error or human political influence! Ah, yes, we are sure we can control climate and weather, right?
Another glass of water, please…I know a place where the tap water is really good!
An ancient saying comes from Bharat Varsha, known these days as India–‘austerity is the wealth of the brahmanas’.
That is an intriguing concept–a lack of material possessions as a source of wealth. It does indeed respond as a balance to the obvious excesses of material acquisition, does it not?
These are the geographical heart of the Berner Oberland. Everything happens under their gaze.
Landscape, humans, animals…how do the humans fit in? Is there a preferred way for interaction between humans and animals in the landscape? In the Berner Oberland Jungfrau Region this photo shows an autumnal parade in the village, celebrating the return of the animals from the upper alps, the upper pastures, to their home barns.
The animals are celebrated, applauded and cheered by the villagers twice a year. In the early summer when they leave the village heading up to mountain pastures and then in the fall when they return.
The animals wear decorative headdresses made by humans from pasture and woodland wild flowers and leaves.
I wonder if the energy expended by humans and animals in the landscape, combined with human attitudes of service, duty and reverence, add together to help generate a healthy feeling in the landscape–despite the avalanches, despite the rock and landslides, despite the flash floods.
Today, after seven hundred years of humans managing forests, pastures, animals, villages and themselves, this Berner Oberland Jungfrau Region landscape attracts visitors from every corner of the world to have their breath taken away by the actual beauty and the aura this landscape brings to all.
For seven hundred years the local Berner Oberland farmers have organized, and agreed how to manage this mountain landscape, rich in water and soil, but limited in arable land.
The food chain of Berner Oberland sustainable agriculture has worked for nearly a millennium.
Now over the last century, the advent of tourism–itself is a mark of increasing affluence–has thrown a bunch of new challenges at these farmers. They continue to work through them.
But the landscape–look at it–it is cared for–the animals are cared for–it is beautiful and beautifully managed. This image depicts the essence of human stewardship of the landscape.
I was walking along pastures this weekend and noticed melted snow beneath tree canopies.
Even in the winter, the tree is working.
See the heat generated by the root mass.
When I look at these Berner Oberland landscapes–filled with fresh water, snow, ice, I am amazed by their inherent wealth and health. I am awed by their physical presence.
For decades I lived around that Empty Quarter arid sand desert of my most recent posts; but I needed refreshment, I needed recharge, so I regularly retreated to these water rich mountains.
These two geographies, one lifeless and the other full of life, put me in contact with the extreme ends of the water continuum of life.
Landscape astounds me.
Landscape journeys enthrall me.
In the 1980s, on the Red Sea coast side of the Hejaz mountains in Saudi Arabia, I worked for four years and never saw rain.
The 1980s Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Western Region shepherds, the goatherds had, as Bedouins always had, steered their flocks toward the parts of the landscape that had cloud bursts or rainstorms most recently. In the 1980s they used Toyota trucks as their primary mode of transportation.
It was always about chasing the water. Water was unpredictable and transient. Transient forbs and grasses were located differently every year, every season. Life depended on successful reading the landscape.
But this wasn’t the Empty Quarter.
The Empty Quarter was empty, why? Because no one could read the landscape, no one could read the water. No life. Empty.
This selection of photos by Mohammed Mohanna posted 2015 captures my memories of 1980s Yanbu–the old Red Sea port town on the Tihama plain, just west of the Hejaz mountains.
Not every desert in the Arabian Peninsula is sand.
The house, the human shelter in this photo sits where the Hejaz mountains fold down onto the flat Tihama coastal plain. The house’s position in the landscape tells the story of: water–there is life; and no water–no life.
In the mid 1980s I lived on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia, in the Western Region. The area is known historically as the Hejaz after the mountains running north from Jeddah, parallel to the Red Sea coast. This is the region of Mecca and Medina. And the Hejaz mountains divide the Tihama, the coastal plain influenced by the Red Sea from the inland deserts, Nafud, and Nejd.
The first time I heard the phrase in the above image caption, ‘no water–no life’ was in Morocco in the early 1970s. I was sitting with a group of people including a young Moroccan man, from Meknes, whose family originally had been farmers in Taza. He said, “Without water there is no life and no cleanliness.”
