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Lost
Palms Oasis |
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The waterway running through Lost Palms Oasis trickled a couple of hundred metres, sank exhausted into the sand, struggled and oozed out a few metres further along, and then gave up for good. The sand was damp for a couple of metres, and thereafter the only indication of the presence of water was the bright green of the adjacent vegetation. But in the disappearing water wriggled dozens of small tadpoles, trapped against the butt end of the stream by the current. The sun beat down unconcernedly, and the isolated stretch of water almost visibly shrank. What unfortunate amphibian had chosen this doomed waterway in which to deposit its spawn? Would any tadpoles survive? I doubted it — those that didn't boil or fry would soon be snapped up by predators. I positioned a large flat stone over the desperately smimming larvae, but left without much hope. I guessed that the continuing drought would claim some more victims, animals that in more normal years would have enough time to mature before the waterway vanished. The oasis is a deep cleft in the overwhelmingly rocky landscape, invisible until you almost stumble into it. At its base are twenty or thirty healthy, dignified palms, a coterie of bushes and shrubs, some fine grasses and plenty of green ooze. It is a magical place, somewhere to just sit and meditate, or just go blank. Further down the oasis, as it begins to open out into the desert, a line of rusty, fractured iron pipe appears, evidence of the efforts people went to in order to obtain water supplies. This line must have run for miles, to some long-vanished mining operation perhaps. |
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