This land is merciless. Hot, parched. It's a wonder so many organisms survive here. Every nook and cranny with a hint of moisture is swept up by some amphibian, fish or insect. In a thirsty land, fresh water comes only from above, down the fortresses of fiery rock, collecting in vernal pools on flimsy floors of cobblestone and sand. And there are plenty of takers.
Hot red dragonflies buzz loudly in the silence of an uninhabited wadi. Schools of little black fish scatter with the eddies from my gum boots in their living space. A successful steer from the bright hot sunlight under an ample boater allows focus on the pint-sized leaping Arabian toads. They don't seem to like the water too much. Opportunists. Hard to imagine that in some places, they're seriously endangered. Near the mouth of the wadi are small stagnant pools abounding in metamorphosing tadpoles and more leaping toads. I spot some unusually large fish in the deep ends of the otherwise clear, shallow waters. Invasive cichlids, Tilapia, from Africa, introduced as aquarium fish and for aquaculture (Tilapia is a common food choice), that managed to escape and conquer the few fresh water sources in Oman.
I look down at my gum boots. There's small chance of overflow from the wadi waters, so I inch closer to the deep end in my search for bacterial mat-infested stones. But there's been some heavy rain six weeks ago, and the disturbance from construction nearby for the development springing up as a by-product of the region's first botanical garden makes it impossible to find viable samples for the experiment. We return empty-handed.
On the rocky drive back, the landscape looks like one of islands of hard grey rock in shallow, almost-opaque seas, strawy green sprouting from the unexposed nooks between rocks. In between the sounds of the wheels over the pebble-laden ground and the construction trucks, there's the cawing of a few egrets. The bright red-orange dragonflies are clearly visible on their bare flat rock perches, and the heat amasses through the windows despite the air-conditioning in the four-wheel. I become conscious of my damp feet.
Damn gum boots are always leaky.
No comments:
Post a Comment