The rising sun breaks above the horizon of the Calanscio sand sea in this photo from December 1990.
This was the first crew where I was the Party Chief. Under prior leadership they'd taken about 8 weeks to get in here across the dunes from Sarir on the western edge of the sand sea, and they were pretty beat up. The next few months would be spent rebuilding.
This is the camp we were driving back to in yesterday's photo. You can see from the way it's nestled on a small plain surrounded by dunes how easy it would be to miss at night.
At the time of this survey, we were the only operation to the east of the sand sea. Occasionally a couple of Libyan Army trucks would stop by but they were few and far between.
The cluster of trailers to the left was the senior staff camp. The dark mass closer to the middle is the mechanics' workshop and on the right is the junior staff camp. We'd typically lay our camps out with the junior staff to the south and the senior staff to the north to help with basic orientation. In some of these featureless places it was easy to get turned around.
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