A Day on Mars in Wadi Rum

I have loved science fiction since I was a boy. When Elon Musk began talking about volunteers for a future Mars settlement, I half-jokingly asked my wife whether we should sign up. She heard the real dream beneath the joke: the longing to see a strange, vast world. At Wadi Rum, facing its red sand and cliffs, she smiled and said, “Your Mars dream has come true.”

We stayed at Sun City Camp in a white dome that looked like a habitat from The Martian. The camp upgraded us to dome number three in the front row. Beyond its window there were no tents, no road and no one in view—only dunes and immense rock walls. The emptiness was beautiful, and it gave my mind room to go quiet.

That afternoon a four-wheel-drive vehicle took us deep into the desert, sliding down dunes and raising clouds of red dust. We stopped at landscapes used in Star Wars, Dune and The Martian, a great natural stone bridge, and a cave associated with Lawrence of Arabia. Our guide held film stills beside the view to show us where scenes had been shot. On the jolting ride, I took my wife’s hand; she held it back.

We left the dome’s curtains open that night. When I woke in the reddish darkness, I sent photographs to our sons. Our older son, then working on his doctorate, replied that it really did look like Mars.

Before dawn, my wife and I curled up together facing the eastern window. Waiting for the sun brought back our own firsts: the first touch of her hand, our first embrace, a train journey spent close together, our first kiss. More than twenty years later, her warmth still made me feel young. We held each other with nothing between us and watched the desert slowly turn from deep red to pink and gold.

For a while we thought we had misjudged the direction or missed sunrise altogether. Then light spilled from behind the clouds, already higher than we expected. I turned toward her as it reached her face. The sweep of the desert was extraordinary, but that intimate moment—the years we had traveled together held in a single embrace—was what made the morning ours.

Breakfast was unexpectedly generous for a camp in such an austere landscape. The manager told us to think of the place as home and to return whenever we wished. As the dunes receded behind the car, I squeezed my wife’s hand and said, “We really did spend a day on Mars.” She gave me the small, knowing smile I would recognize anywhere.