The travellers settled into a monotonous routine, one day blending into the next with weary regularity. The advancing season changed so gradually, they hardly noticed when the warm sun become a scorching ball of flame searing the steppes, turning the flat plain into a jaundiced monochrome of dun earth, buff grass and beige rocks against a dust laden yellowish drab sky. For three days their eyes smarted with smoke and ashes carried by the prevailing winds from a sweeping prairie fire. They passed massive herds of bison, and giant deer with huge palmate antlers, horses, onagers and asses; more rarely, saiga antelope with horns growing straight out of the tops of their heads slightly curved back at the tips; tens upon tens of thousands of grazing animals supported by the extensive grassland.
Long before they neared the marshy isthmus, that both connected the peninsula to the main continent and served as an outlet for the shallow salty sea to the northeast, the massive mountain range, second highest on earth, loomed into view. Even the lowest peaks were capped with glacial ice to halfway down their flanks, coldly unmoved by the searing heat of the plains. When the level prairie merged into low rolling hills, dotted with fescue and father grass, and red with a richness of iron ore – the red ochre making it hallowed ground – Brun knew the salt marsh was not far beyond. It was a secondary and more tenuous link . The primary connection of the peninsula to the mainland was the northern one that formed past of the western boundary of the smaller inland sea.

The freshness of early summer in the temperature zone near the cave changed character on the open plains of the continental steppes to the east. Gone was the rich green foliage that filled out brush and deciduous trees and still betrayed the new season’ growth of conifers with needles a shade lighter at the tips of branches and spires. Instead quick-rooting and sprouting herbs and grasses, already chest high, whose youthful verdancy was lost to the drab hue indeterminate between green and gold, stretched to the horizon. Thick, matted, old season growth cushioned their steps as the clans wove their way across the illimitable prairie, leaving his contemporary ripple behind showing the way they had come. Clouds rarely marred the boundless expanse above except for an occasional thunderstorm, more often seen from a distance. Surface water was scarce. They stopped to fill water bags at every stream, unsure if they would find any conveniently close when they camped for the night.
From the book ‘Theclan of the cave bear’ by Jean M. Auel