Grey checkered American Eagle ballet flats

(for SATURDAY, March 20)

Week 7, Day One

There's a part of the Muscat landscape we don't see much of. Industry. With all this open sandy land to use, the concrete maze grows horizontally here. And the mills get built far, far away. But on the impromptu trip to a new wadi, we take the Nizwa freeway from Al-Khoud towards the township of Sa'al. And I discover one of Muscat's industrial pastures on the way. Lone, white and steel structures rising from the sand, seemingly lost amongst the many orange mountains.

Sa'al is built near an oasis under the foot of a comparatively large mountain, the summit gleaming, sharp, sun-thrashed. The drive ends halfway up a dirt path and we get out into the crazy afternoon sun. It is deathly silent. There are no date palms in sight, no towering hills for shade. The fifteen-minute walk to the wadi is traumatic when you're not dressed for the occasion. My grey checkered American Eagle ballet flats have long run their course, but I had no other alternative on this impromptu trip up to the wadi. So I walk past the stinging needles of the desert plants that are hoping to land their seeds near the vernal pools by latching onto the thin, really thin, spun cotton on my feet.

The elephant grey rocks housing the intermittent pools of water run like frozen waves along the entire length of the stream. Somewhere beneath all those hard rocks must lie tiny gullets linking the pools. Red dragonflies buzz between pools, sampling their prey. Fish and metamorphosing tadpoles dart between pebbles, not much silt here anyhow. The pools are relatively transparent. We hunt for pools housing newly-spawned tadpoles. The terrain is death sentence to my cute ballet flats, and I'm afraid by the time I'm done with this little trip, my beloved American Eagles will topple into their graves. I don't care if they die bravely. I want them to be preserved.

The combination of the silence and the heat is shockingly calming. But it's still March. The boiling, blistering heat is yet to come. A goat bleats in the distance. But it's hard to see where, what with all the jutting mounds of grey blocking the only view spared by the blinding sun. I get back to the tadpoles and I hear it bleat again. I can't resist cocking my head up to look again. I get my fill of tadpoles, skip from rock to rock, and collect more stinging needles on the way back to the car.

My legs will be crying tonight.