A couple of years back we were in Egypt, and while spending time in and around Cairo with my friend Jenny Bowker, we enjoyed a camping trip out through the Black Desert into the White Desert SW of Cairo.  Most of the party slept out on the sands enjoying the constant gentle cool breeze after a delicious dinner and campfire cameraderie to close off  an interesting day.  By bed time we’d all had glimpses of at least one of these shy creatures who kept mostly to the shadows around our campsite, but even by the time we went to bed their tracks showed  they had ventured into the quieter corners of the campsite, and were on the lookout for food.  We heard several of them squabbling out in the dark over bones and left overs they’d snatched  from the bits and pieces the beduoin driver/guide/cooks  had put out their way after we’d finished our dinner.  Lying wide awake just before dawn, I watched one of them warily tip-toeing around a neaby sleeping body( Esterita)  but outside sudden-flung arm’s reach … and then !flash! Mike captured this guy on, um, digits.  Inside a tent, he ‘d quietly managed to reach his camera and get this lovely shot of the desert fox, feneeq. 

As the sun came up and we began moving around there were an amazing number of tracks cross crossing the whole camp site.  Knowing the German WWII commander in the north afrrican desert, Erwin Rommel, had been nicknamed ‘The Desert Rat’  by the British, I googled some bios to find a photo but his ears were very normal looking – so the nickname must have referred to his stealthy cunning, because he was legendary in tank and strategic deesert warfare all across that arena. 

This experience is just one of the things I think about each time I approach my ‘Tracks’ series to start a new work.