Really, Really White Sands National Monument
ByOnly once before have I fallen victim to this illusion. It was a moonlight summer night on Long Beach Island, New Jersey, and I could not convince myself that the dunes were not covered with snow.
And then it happened again Wednesday morning, on a hottish bright day in New Mexico. Tell me that this doesn’t look exactly like snow drifts–and that the blue mountains behind the dunes couldn’t pass for the sea!
The gypsum sand doesn’t support many birds (Black-throated Sparrows, Say’s Phoebes, a Cactus Wren or two where the vegetation is denser), but the bizarre landscape held us until our dazzled eyes could look on it no more.
We looked, to no effect, for the bleached earless lizard that lives on the sands. We did, though, find clear signs of a much larger creature wandering the dunes.
Not one of us: we all remained decently shod and on the boardwalk.
