Dust

At about 35,000 feet as we approached this area there was a haze. It looked like a cloud bank, except it was the wrong color. "Is that smoke?" I asked, "It can't be dust this high." But it can, of course.

When the dust storms come in, the morning light looks yellow, not quite a lemon yellow, more sickly. In the evening everything is a bright orange. It looks like a bad science fiction movie special effect for the surface of Mars. It is eerie and beautiful and alien and exotic.

Change things slightly, a little darker, a little smokier. High on a wall are curls of razor wire. Caught in the razor wire are trash bags and tattered sheets of black pastic flapping in the wind. It looks like a clothesline in Hell.

To the naked eye in the orange dusk the motes of dust are invisible, too fine to even taste. The first pictures look bad and I frantically clean the lens trying to wipe off the water marks. The lens is clean of course. The flash is illuminating dust looking like light bubbles in the picture. I turn off the flash. I will treasure those pictures.