More on White Sands

White on white. Barren yet surreal beauty. To even an astute observer, the place appears devoid of life. 250 million years ago, this land lay quietly at the bottom of an inland sea. Heat, pressure and time brought this bed of pure gypsum to the surface, where it subsequently collapsed, trapping sand in a vast basin. Today that sand blows continually into ever-changing, convoluted, white dunes. It’s a land of texture without color. Preserved as White Sands National Monument, this anomaly of a "desert within a desert" occupies the northern fringes of New Mexico’s Chihuahuan Desert. What life there is here must have been breathed into the place by the wind, for no evolutionary "plan" could have decided how to fill this niche. Even the lizards and the mice are white, their only protection from predation. If a plant can’t root quickly here, it’s blown away. Yet stark turns soft each evening, as nature paints a sunset light show on the sand, perhaps reminding us that beauty, too, comes in as many forms as nature. My Experience of White Sands Forthcoming from DeeAnn Pederson The Nature of White Sands By Bradford Glass New Mexico’s San Andres and Sacramento mountain ranges ring the 275 square mile Tularosa Basin, trapping the pure white gypsum sand of this, the world’s largest gypsum field, a relic of the collapse of an ancient seabed. Today, constant southwest winds sculpt sand into ever-changing patterns of glistening white dunes, with names like dome dunes, barchan, transverse and parabolic - each denoting a shape and the conditions under which it is formed. White Sands National Monument lives its name. By every account of observation, the place is unique. One hidden piece of uniqueness is that gypsum is water-soluble, so it is rarely found as sand. But here where there is little moisture, and no outlet to the sea, the meager rainfall remains in the basin, and the gypsum re-crystallizes out after the water evaporates. Lake Lucerno, at the southern end of the monument, is dry most of the year (an ephemeral lake, or playa), today’s result of the gradual drying of a large, ancient, Pleistocene sea. But after a rainfall, the lake returns, only to evaporate again, often leaving huge crystals of selenite (pure gypsum, of course) along its shores. Over time, these crystals break down by wind action and thawing, returning once again to sand. Life is not obvious here. Often you must look for its shadows, either literally or figuratively. Ripple marks show where wind has touched the sand. Footprints at dawn show where animals have made their nightly rounds. Circles in the sand around grassy plants show where the wind has blown.

Visible Wind Shifting Sands

To survive here, plants in White Sands must add to their heat-tolerant, drought-tolerant desert adaptations the ability to deal with alkaline, nutrient-poor soil, and a constantly shifting platform. Some amazing solutions have occurred. Plants like the soaptree yucca can elongate its stem by up to a foot per year in order to keep its leaves above shifting sands. Other plants can trap sand within their roots so they can continue to grow on a pedestal of sand after the dune has moved on.

The animal life of White Sands has also developed specialized means of survival. Wildlife, as in most desert regions, is generally nocturnal, avoiding the sweltering heat of the midday sun. But a mouse on white sand is an easy target for a fox, coyote or owl, even at night. Not surprisingly then, the pocket mouse of White Sands is …. white. So are a couple of species of lizards, along with a number of insects.

At sunset and sunrise, the sky gives back what it takes away at both noon and midnight -- color. For a photographer, the constantly changing shapes, shadows and lighting make the place a dream world of surreal beauty.