Water That Binds

The night rain spreads across the sand and binds the billions of particles for a light impression of foot and claw.

lizard track

The kit fox emerges, and the jack rabbit, and the great horned owl. The darkling beetle wakes with the dawn. The sun calls a black-throated sparrow. The bleached lizard runs from an approaching foot, Nike imprint in the sand.

Leaves of cottonwood track the surface from a wind-tossed limb. The primrose petals radiate; the jack rabbit and coyote run. Water binds the gypsum desert only inches from the surface.

The White Sands encompass 275 square miles. The Sands form an oasis in a chalk dry Chihuahuan Desert bowl.

Sure, it’s a long way to the trout streams, but wait… As water binds the particles of gypsum, water urges every dune’s crest into motion, blowing on the wind toward the places we know and love.

As the wilderness moves, the white dunes invite: movies have been filmed here; Pink Floyd played a concert on the ’90s sand.

Imagine night-walking with a full moon overhead, the starkness and the hazard now soft and beautiful…

A river top in a vast waterless realm? Crazy! But there’s water at the bottom of the ocean (Talking Heads). There’s a river that flows through the sand.