Some photos from a visit to White Sands with my friend Georgia about a decade ago. Another mysterious place, one I particularly would have liked to visit by moonlight, the glistening white sands reflecting moon shadows.
White Sands National Park is in the Tularosa Basin, a vast field of white sand dunes composed of gypsum crystals. Approximately 12,000 years ago, the Tularosa Basin featured lakes, streams, grasslands, and Ice Age mammals. As the climate warmed, rain and snowmelt dissolved gypsum from the surrounding mountains and carried it into the basin. As the lakes dried up selenite crystals formed, which broke up and were transported east, producing gypsum sand. About 45 species live only in the Park, and 40 of those are moths. Given the high heat in the summer, most of those are nocturnal, illusive "moon moths". It's believed that the oldest known human footprints in North America are found at White Sands. These are fossilized footprints found buried in layers of gypsum soil that can be dated to 21,000 and 23,000 years ago - remarkable, as the present consensus for human arrival into North America is placed at 13–16,000 years ago.
Legend also has it that there is a ghostly woman who wanders among the sands at night, mourning her lost children and her lost life.
The nearby "valley of Fire", a vast volcanic field called the Malpais ("bad land") is also fascinating and darkly beautiful.
