Saving the Drying Sea

Saving the Drying SeaThe light-yellow summer sun focused its energy in the southern part of the burning hot horizon. It was midday. The scorching heat slowly dried out any remaining feelings of consciousness. The thermometer read 53oC and my colleagues and I strolled back to our field camp after an entomological excursion. Slowly receding behind us was the steep shores of the Aral Sea. Our path lay across its driedout seabed.Just yesterday evening our expedition group got to the northern part of the Aral Sea and admired the shore's massive ledges carved out by erosion that proudly towered against the backdrop of the purple-blue sky. To us first timers in that part of the world the site use chose for our camp that night could not have been better. Oh, what a memorable sight! A cool evening breeze, impressive sand bar along the shore, hot drink of tea, discussion about philosophy around a fire at midnight, crystal stars piercing the velvet black night. It was only in the morning as use prepared to set out that we realised that our night camp was in fact an abandoned landing-stage, temporarily constructed on the drying Aral sea-bed in trail after the receded water. The barges and launches that were strewed around seemed to sink deeper into the sand with time. Not far from the shore stood a well of mollusc shells almost two metres high.We were only about two hundred metres away from the camp and the horizon looked hazy because of the strong evaporation. The massive ledges did not look that majestic as it had seemed the night before, and could we call the pale from the burning hot air, flickering and turbid landscape beautiful? We reached the camp and I proposed to my companion t...