A place I hold dear is the desert.
Most people don't understand this fascination.
I like it because it is a creeping sea of heat and sand.
To me, it's a place where a tsunami of grains forever move at a sluggish, slow pace, allowing the wind to decide its course.
It's where grainy valleys are so deep they seem to stretch down into hell itself.
Sand between your toes is welcome relief compared to your sticky, boiling shoes after two hours straight walking.
But, sand grains getting blown by wind and ending in your eyes and mouth? Not so much.
However, as you finally drag yourself up the dune nearest to civilisation, you look back at the hills, mountains, dips and chasms and wonder: How did I do that?
How, on earth, did I cross that?
The desert is where the air is so hot, you can taste it.
It tastes completely dry, as if someone has put a warm, dry towel in your mouth and rubbed it around in there.
The only thing that can be sensed, sometimes, is heat.
Literally, it becomes your entire existence: taste heat, touch heat, you can even hear heat.
It is tedious, a monotonous drone, like a huge mosquito constantly hovering above your head.
You can even see heat - the endless expanse of gold and orange consuming all other forms of colour, forcibly pushing hot air into your eyes.
The ocean of sand makes you perceive things differently to normal people, and you can't truly appreciate the beauty of the desert until you have crossed it, until you have reflected on what you did.
Deserts hold beauty that only they can hold, but they also have some of the darkest secrets on this globe.
The skeletons of old tell us that.
They are the perpetual reminder that we are at the mercy of the deserts; that we are never in control of them.
Yet, the pain they force on you only makes the reward all the sweeter.
A view from the highest dune. A simple view, an understated view of the golden sea that surrounds you.
A view that seems rather overdone in the scrapbooks of frequent travellers, who show their armchair friends, things they can never appreciate.
To me, in that moment, it is something amazing. Incredible. Maybe even terrifyingly awe-inspiring.
Only you can see what you see in the desert. Only you can remember then what you remember.
Whether it is an evil opponent, vanquished when your hands clawed you through the last few metres of sand separating you from civilisation; or a simple challenge, tackled the minute you set your foot on the sand.
To me, it is an old rival, who tries his very best to beat me, to make me turn back, stop, die, anything.
He never does. I always defeat him. I am better than him, and I will never let him forget it.
• By Arana McLachlan (year 11, Mount Aspiring College)
