ABSTRACT
This chapter continues the theme of liminality raised by the discussion in Chapter 3, but within the context of nature rather than gender. It continues furthermore to probe how modern desert writing reveals as much about the land left behind as the land being explored. The work of desert scientists (physicist Uwe George, entomologists Tony Pittaway and Donald Walker, and geographer Nigel Winser), captured in moments of sublime contemplation of the natural world, is examined for the commentary it offers about the human place within nature and the growing concerns about the distortion of this relationship in a globalised, mechanised, and often alienating world. In identifying the artificial nature of boundaries between disciplines (for example, between scientific documentation and travel literature) that has become a feature of exploration narratives since the 1950s, this chapter employs ecocriticism to show how modern desert texts often reach towards a more equitable definition of the human relationship with the environment.
