I woke up to someone shaking me. “Meeks, it’s time.” It was dark. I was confused what exactly my friend was referencing. There was silence and then immediate recognition. No more words needed. I staggered out of my sleeping bag, threw on a hoody and we dodged over our friends with the hopes our headlamps weren’t too distracting from their slumbers. We didn’t talk during our walk towards the subtle haze of the horizon line off in the distance.
It was nice to feel the sand seeping between my toes. Cold and smooth. I wanted to immediately dig myself in since the deeper your feet went, the warmer the sand was. I was still cranky for not being asleep. I was cold. But, I had made the promise the night before - “Yeah, I’m in. Let’s get up and catch the sunrise.” I would have blamed it on a glass of wine, but Morocco is completely dry. Alcohol was not the cause for such overconfident declarations this time around.
We kept on walking up and up towards the enormous hill ahead. The hill kept rising and getting steeper and steeper. I was now clawing at the sand between my fingers. It was absolutely lovely - trickling down my hands. I threw my arms as deep as they would go into the sand - embracing the sensation. Exhausted already from the climb.
“Come on! We’re running out of time!” Our goal was the reach the top of the highest sand dune, about a mile from where I laid, bathing myself in sediments. We had about 30 minutes till sunrise and began to book it. I had never before been to any desert. When we saw this sand dune from afar upon our arrival, it struck something in me. It was huge! I never anticipated mountains of pure sand.
Now, if you’ve ever gone running in sand, you understand that it can be an exhausting feat. We were traversing across the ridge line, 450 feet high and gaining. Now that’s a robust dune! The sun almost catching up with us and we were so close to the top!
We finally made it.
I heard the morning’s prayer faintly begin behind us on the town’s public speakers, “Allāhu akbar, As-salatu Khayrun Minan-nawm.” I learned in my travels through Morocco that this recording went off multiple times in the day - everyone had to stop what they were doing and pray to Allah. Right now it was 6 am and the morning alarm just went off for Muslims everywhere. “Allah is the greatest, Allah is the greatest. Prayer is better than sleep.” All I wanted was to sleep.
My friend and I sat and waited for the sun. The dunes had gone from grey to a faint purple and blue glow. For some reason, I related my present moment to Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince). His plane crashes in the desert and he concludes that the planet he lands on is uninhabited by human beings. Looking out into the ocean of sand, I imagined such an idea. In reality, we were the only two to exist in our worlds at that moment. I was empowered by our present circumstance.
The faint purple and blue dunes had turned to a glowing yellow. The sun was just behind the wave of sand. And then she came with a beautiful then blinding force. Immediately, right when the sun touched us, the warmth bathed my skin. We held hands. And that was all I needed. We were alive.
It was a blissful 10 minutes, followed by a rapid spike in temperature. The sand went from cold beneath my toes to warm to hot to burning. “Shit,” I murmured. We didn’t plan for this. That window to presence and calmness was rapidly shutting - my feet were on fire and I had a whole mile of flames of an ocean in front of me. My friend looked at me, grinned and giggled. What the hell was so funny?!? Then, he just jumped into a tuck and started rolling drastically down the dune. I was baffled. confused. Wasn’t he in pain? The burning sensation started to get slightly worse. Well here it goes. I started rolling. The sand was so soft that the impact was welcoming. I rolled and rolled. disoriented but loving it the whole way down. Once I reached the bottom, we had another 20 minutes of waking through fire. I did the whole shirt sandal walk. I was exhausted, burnt, and content.
I was only 18 when I crawled up that massive sand dune, but I learned a very valuable lesson that I’ve been recently going back to over the past few months - always get up for that sunrise and say “HELL YES” to the adventures that are presented to you. You can sleep when your dead. “For prayer is better than sleep” - whatever that means to you. To me, I tend to believe in the importance of jumping out of my comfort zones - those are the moments when I learn the most about who I am and grow from uncomfortable to comfortable. Then the process repeats - that's living. I’m now prepared for the challenge of the next sand dune I wish to climb