Intro

There aren’t many mementos sitting on my desk. Clutter weighs me down, and material things are immaterial to me. If I’ve been out in the desert, there might be a fresh sprig of sage or some juniper on my dash, but in general I believe in letting things lay where they lay.

To this, though, there are two exceptions. If I’ve had a particularly notable experience in the field, I might gather a bit of dirt or sand from the spot, looking for symbolism from the place I collect it. On the border of Morocco and Algeria one night, as the stars swirled above, I lifted the foreleg of the camel I’d been riding and scooped some Sahara desert from beneath its foot. In Muizenberg, South Africa, at the very end of the continent, the wind blew the sea into a green froth and deposited a small white dune into my towel, which I shook into a baggie. Alongside the lapping waters of