A body of water vs the desert sands. 🤔
Here's some light hearted silliness for your day. About three weeks ago, I posted what I thought may have been perceived as a silly question on Twitter, and here's what it said. This may be a stupid question, but in an oasis is presuming there's a body of water, no matter the size. How does it maintain its existence? Wouldn't blowing sand eventually fill it in? Or is the idea of a body of water in an oasis a misnomer?
So pretty much it's from the overflowing of the aqua fire rushing to the surface and they create, like, these natural springs. And from there, life starts thriving because there's soil underneath, especially in these harsh conditions within the desert. So I hope this helps, but we thought we offered more of a grounded, rooted in science kind of response. But our ancestors understood this long, long ago. They understood how water could be collected underneath the sand
And I had these preconceived or ideas of what a quote unquote body of water is. When you see something like that outside of the desert, there's the illusion of, quote unquote permanency. Although change happens, some of it, where we can see in our lifetimes and sometimes even shorter than that, and other things take it much longer to happen, but the change that we could see happening in the desert happens much faster. Right?
Hey, Christina. Yeah, we hear what you're saying, but sandstorms only happen when the wind picks up from dry areas. So an oasis is not a dry area. So the dryest part of the desert wouldn't have an oasis. Oasis, again, it comes from underground water just coming up, so that would make that moist wetland right under the sand. So the likelihood of sandstorms happening where an oasis is, it's not that frequent. That's why oasis would last so long
Kathy Beasley
@Kbeasley67 · 0:26
I don't have much knowledge about sand dunes or oasis, but your concept is actually brilliant. What a mind. I hope you you write books, because the description and the analogies and what she came up with, it was epic. I enjoyed that. Thank you
Nick montecalvo
@jmontecalvo · 3:33
I mean, I live in the Northwest where it's like raining right now when it's summer, for crying out loud. So I see plenty of water. Just my theory, my take on it. Interesting story. Made me kind of chuckle. I really was intrigued by how you told the story. So it's very good. Yeah, that's just what I know. I mean, not that I want to go get lost in the desert to find out
Thanks, Kathy. You are not the first person to say that about writing books. I never know exactly what to do with it, though. The idea seems daunting after I helped a friend publish her own book. Yeah. Anyway, nice to meet you and welcome to Swell. I'm sure we will run into each other again. Have a good day
It being temporary. And if I had the opportunity to dive into it, the way that you were describing, like that creates another interesting visual in my mind of the moving sand dunes, the moving water and me floating in it. I mean, of course, this is not exactly it, right? You'd have to be able to speed it up in so many different ways and may be in the water long enough. Anyway, just fanciful imagining over here
Tim Ereneta
@Tim · 1:41
I've only visited one oasis in my life and it was in California in the Mojave Desert, which does not have sand it's a rocky desert it's a desert because there's no precipitation and the oasis was in a canyon and you could see how the canyon would collect rainwater but also because of the geology and the fault lines, it was pushing up underground water to the surface from the aquifer to the surface and that's why the oasis was there but your question dreamed me I started looking this up and what I discovered was in oasis in sandy deserts, one of the things that happens if it's high temperature during the day and low temperature at night, right then you get condensation of moisture out of the atmosphere at night, you get dew
Binati Sheth
@Binati_Sheth · 4:57
So that is why Bedouin tribes or tribes that move around in deserts, they don't stick with one oasis ever. They'll move from one oasis to the next. Why? Because they know that this is pretty temporary. Per their experience, the moment the spring stops pushing the water up, the vases will dry off and there's also water and all the greenery around it will disappear very quickly. So that is very different to how civilizations and non desert places operate
Right. I mean, it could evaporate. I don't know. I don't know what I'm only asking because I don't even know how you define, like, the fun of an oasis or the amount of due or any of these things. I'm just sort of rambling at you. You've got me thinking now. Thank you
Thank you for this. I think deep down, a part of me maybe knew and forgot why Bedouins moved and instead chose to remember or think about it, that it was a cultural choice, which I don't know why I would have thought that, because I can't even find anything in my mind to support that idea. And it makes very little sense. But, yeah, thank you for clarifying that
Binati Sheth
@Binati_Sheth · 3:46
I don't think there is any agreed upon explanation for why it happens, to the best of my knowledge. So I think crazy spaces like this are very helpful. It makes you think about things. You don't generally put a lot of thought into the bedroom thing. I think this is why exchange geography should be taught where we are allowed to draw conclusions, right. Rather than the fact that everything is chopped up to history or culture. I think history and culture
And then the satisfaction of once I do come to that conclusion, going and doing the research and finding whether I was close or not, these other pieces of information. I remember reading sometime last year about black holes, and I could go down that rabbit hole, but we'll save that for another time and started to contemplate, like, whether there was a black hole at the center of the universe. And I hadn't come across that or anything
Binati Sheth
@Binati_Sheth · 4:48
Because this is one thing that not a lot of people in the writing industry, the young writers in the writing industry are willing to do. Right? Currently, it's all about drama. And I'm like, yes, but then at some point, the market is going to get saturated with that in these spaces. If we come up with imagination, yeah, that could work out. So this is what Jameson had to say about creating the universe and I completely forgot my tangent. Tangent
There has to be things have to make sense to some extent. I don't know what I'm getting at. Maybe there's a disconnect from you is not knowing exactly what is meant by making sense. Because I've read plenty of books and both genres, even some that cross blend those lines where things don't make sense, meaning either the character isn't consistent, the systems aren't consistent, something's not consistent. And in that respect, I lose interest in the book
Your idea of the fluidity of the water and the sand and moving across the desert is intriguing. I would like to hear the rest of that story. Do you have that can be. You get that to me. I would really love to hear where you go with that. I just love the thought of this moving body of water that it moves for people who are stranded in the desert and need that oasis and it appears there it is. It came to them instead of them coming to the oasis
I would like to apologize for the amount of times I say it's a nervous habit. I think this is a new form for me. I'm not used to talking and having people actually hear it. Anyway, I apologize for the thing and and a I'm still hanging on every word
This past week or so, I've been waking up with these random vocabulary words in my mind. Erstwhile, I don't even know what that meant. I had to look that one up. Some of the other ones I knew at least, but that one was the most bizarre. Anyway, vocabulary words are fun, even if I never get a chance to use them
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
I think that we're going to have a whole new swell go up here. Some of my favorite words are swell. I'm a cosmetologist. And when we were, it's just something we needed need to know what reciprocity was. And that word stuck with me now for years and years. And then I think the other one that I really love is fiduciary. I love that word. I just want to be a fiduciary just so I can say the word
I'm going to throw a link in here first. Swell. I did the other day that you may find or not entertaining, but it has to do with words. So I thought I would throw it here
It does, it just bothers me a lot when we have to lay blame on stuff and we're all just living, we've come here for something. And I heard a song the other day, I think it's called How Did You Love? And that resonated with me. And that's one of the reasons we're here, just to see, to make sure we do it better this time, that we either loved better or we taught love to another person
Instead of focusing on the hot potato at fault and not wanting any part of it anyway. Yeah, that's a good one. Thank you. And no pressure or need to respond on the other. I just wanted to share it in case it was of any amusement. Words so fascinating. Thank you for your conversations in this it's been enjoyable