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西奈之旅的第二天，我们一行12人来到一个毫无生机的山谷，这里没有树、没有草、没有水，也没有动物。沙岩地上满是巨石，它们仿佛被一个粗野的巨人踩过后，滚下周围的山坡。这些光秃秃、赤裸裸的山脉，显露出了通常被层层泥土和茂密松树林所遮掩的地貌。狭长的洼地和裂缝诉说着千万年来饱受的压力，而经历不同地质年代的演化，山脉间也出现了众多的横断面。地球的地壳构造板块之间的褶状花岗石，就像亚麻布一样。山脉在地平线上无止境地延伸，直到西奈山的高原逐渐变成铺满碎石的“砂砾烤盘”。贝都因人把它形容为“埃尔帝”（El Tih），或“流浪者的沙漠”。

Two days into my Sinai trip, the group of twelve which I have joined reaches a valley empty of life, without trees, grass, water or animals. Only boulders lie strewn across a sandstone floor, as though the stamping of a petulant giant had caused them to roll off the sides of the surrounding mountains. These mountains look like naked alps and their nudity reveals geological origins normally concealed beneath coats of earth and pine forest. There are gashes and fissures that speak of the pressures of millennia, there are cross-sections through disproportionate expanses of time. The earth's tectonic plates have rippled granite as though it were linen. The mountains spread out in seeming infinity on the horizon until eventually the high plateau of the southern Sinai gives way to a featureless, baking gravelpan described by the bedouins as 'El Tih', or the desert of the Wandering.

菲利普·德·卢泰尔堡：《阿尔卑斯山雪崩》，1803年

卡斯帕·大卫·弗里德里希：《吕根岛的白垩峭壁》，约1818年