Blinded by the White (Sands)

White Sands National Monument

If you’re not into wearing sunglasses, White Sands National Monument will help anyone find  religion. The gypsum dunes radiated brightness I did never anticipated. As we traversed some boardwalks and series of rolling dunes, exploring the flora that endure in this wondrous basin, I sometimes struggled to see.

Pecan groves

Still, the beauty of White Sands and the Tularosa Basin was worth an attempted blinding. El Paso's proximity to New Mexico made the Land of Enchantment impossible to skip. Leaving El Paso and the Franklin Mountains behind, we became enamored with another range, the Organ Mountains, the granite protrusions atop its peaks resembling a set of organ pipes. The peaks are among the five ranges that form the Organ Mountain-Desert Peaks National Monument established in 2014. In a land of striking mountains, the Organs stood out prominently.

A short drive up I-10 led to Las Cruces, where we jogged east on U.S. 70, which crosses San Augustin Pass, a break between the Organs and the San Andres Mountains. At the pass we stopped to observe the craggy mountain details. Mountains completely hemmed the land below.

Dead yucca pods

The San Andres were also worn and grooved into uncommon heights. Gypsum washed away from this range forms White Sands below. Like Death Valley other deep southwestern valleys, the Tularosa Basin housed a lake during the last ice age that eventually evaporated. The valley has no outlets for water - the water-soluble gypsum would simply dissolve. But in the Tularosa Basin, it accumulates into a dune field.

Looking west at the Organ Mountains

The Tularosa Basin has few occupants – Alamogordo and its 30,000 people, endless rows of electric wires, White Sands Missile Range and White Sands National Monument. The monument often closes during missile tests the range, but none loomed this Sunday.

 The broad bleached patch is visible from orbit. It’s just as striking on flat ground. We noticed the instant sand broke into the desert terrain, the yucca and creosote spaced out further. With no outlet for water, ephemeral lakes formed in the basin, including the national monument’s Lake Lucero, which sat dry on this Sunday.

Outside the monument we ran into our first border checkpoint – it was less intensive than in 2014, when the agents asked a battery of questions, even trying to get me to slip up by asking if we were from Nova Scotia because we both wore shirts from an Atlantic provinces. This time the agent only asked our nationality and the number of people in the car.

More dunes

From the checkpoint we turned directly into White Sands headquarters, a series of Depression-era, adobe Pueblo Revival buildings protected as a national historic district. Beyond a closed guard shack, the monument road vanished into the mysterious dune fields. Created by President Herbert Hoover in 1933, the monument follows the path of many rare landscapes – pressure over possible development led to permanent protection for the parabolic dunes.
 A metal boardwalk into the dune fields explains their formation and how they differ from beachfront sand dunes. Unlike quartz, the primary component in most sands, the White Sands gypsum was not hot. Despite moving sands and arid conditions, water hides close to the surface, sometimes just inches below the sand.

Yucca soared from the dunes, sometimes rising where the sands moved on. Often they die when the dunes shift, their root structures exposed. Skunkbush sumac fares better, growing deep root systems that protect the plant once the dunes move on. Evolutionary adaptations make many of the animals hard to see --- bleached earless lizards and Apache pocket mice are both paler in White Sands than elsewhere in the Chihuahuan Desert.

Bird tracks dotted some of the dunes. Visiting mid-day meant avian wildlife sightings were the only guarantee. Birds rested among shaded benches at the visitor center, but the dunes were quiet.

Fool on the dune

The most common tracks were shoeprints. While White Sands has a number of trails, the changing dunes leaves visitors free to wander in the wilderness. The visitor center sells sleds, then buys them back at a reduced rate. A handful of families set out to test sleds on dunes a few dozen feet high. We started our own path into the dune fields.

Dead yucca stalks still stood, topped by the husks of old seed pods. Other plants sprouted violet flowers among desert-toughened leaves. After a little walking, it became apparent how easily anyone could become lost. We only ventured three or four rows of dunes from the car.

Without easy landmarks – the yucca plants can be hard to tell apart – diversions were everywhere. Tracking our own footprints across dunes and around vegetation brought us back to the road. The persistent whiteness of everything did grow overwhelming. When we walked on level dunes, I sometimes closed my eyes for relief. When we reached Big Bend, I bought clip-ons.

Although we weren’t equipped for camping on this trip, we wondered what clear starry nights rose over the monument on clear nights. The park has 10 primitive backcountry campsites. They lie more than a mile from the monument road. At Block-Table and Tap in El Paso that night, a bartender told us about camping in White Sands during August’s Perseid meteor shower. I envisioned walking around those dunes without a flashlight, the gypsum sands so bright to negate need for any other light. Of course I could imagine myself lost in that white wilderness.

After a few miles, the pavement ends and packed sand form the road surface. Despite looked like it was carved out of snow, the driving presented no problems. Some of shorter trails were closed (the park enforced a no-stopping zone), so we took leave of White Sands.

 However, we took our time leaving the Tularosa Basin, stopping to observe new facets in its photogenic mountain ranges. Every few minutes we pulled off the road to absorb what we could before ramping up to San Augustin Pass and leaving this curious valley behind.

Tasty finds at  the winery

We had our share of Texas bottles, but we couldn’t leave without a taste of Mesilla Valley wine. Past experiences with New Mexico wines had always been positive. We wound our way to the Rio Grande Winery and Vineyard for an afternoon tipple.

We left the highway for major groves of pecans and other crops. Southeastern New Mexico has emerged as a top pecan region due to its hot, dry climate. The wine grapes also grow pretty well. While RGW bottles some wines from its estate grapes, it does source fruit from elsewhere in New Mexico, usually Deming. This winery also has its own pecan grove. They pour a wide range of grapes, including an excellent Spanish-style blend.

After a sample of five wines, we each had a larger pour, a bag of local pecans and exquisite panoramas of the Organ range. The mountains were the enduring image of the day. While we sipped, we looked onto the mountains that hid the Tularosa Basin and its mystic, shifting dunes.

Winery view of the Organ Mountains