“Sometimes you have got to look at things really positively – without putting your head in the sand, you have got to manage the negatives and keep putting a positive slant on it. Keep trying to find answers.” – Brian McDermot
I just got a glimpse of these white sand dunes as I passed by them just outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico. — Wikimedia photo
White Sands: Beauty and Missiles
When you think of White Sands in New Mexico, what’s the first thought that pops up in your brain? Monument or Missiles?
White Sands National Monument, whose dunes of glistening gypsum sands I passed on the final leg of my trip home after three weeks in Texas, is a place of both. I didn’t stop this day, but have taken the time to explore the 275 square miles of glistening white sand on past road trips.
But I did stop long enough in Texas Canyon, 50 miles east of Tucson, to snap a few pictures of the area’s rocky landscape. == Photo by Pat Bean
The National Park Service claims that this is the world’s largest gypsum dune field, and that its rising from the heart of the desert in the Tularosa Basin is like no place else on earth. The Park Service also notes that occasionally the monument is closed to the public because of testing events at the nearby White Sands Missile Range, which Wikipedia claims is the largest military installation in the United States.
The seemingly oxymoron of beauty and missiles crossed my mind, sending me back in time to when my youngest daughter served on a destroyer tender during the Gulf War. Her ship was the USS Acadia, named after Acadia National Park in Maine.
Whose bright idea was it to name military ships after National Parks, I wondered at the time?
Such thoughts occupied my mine again during the next hundred miles or so driven beneath low-hanging clouds. I hit the rain at Texas Canyon in Arizona, with its own unique landscape of giant granite boulders. Although eager to get home, which was just 50 miles away, Pepper and I took a brief, damp break at the canyon rest stop.
By the time we did reach home, the drizzling rain that accompanied our last leg of the journey had turned into a downpour. I took it as a sign that Mother Nature was welcoming us back to Tucson.
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Bean Pat: Blood-Red Pencil: Breaking up is good to do http://bloodredpencil.blogspot.com/ I like this writing advice, probably because I still have a journalistic habit of short paragraphs. Some editors like it, and some don’t. It just goes to show that writing is never like math. Two and two are never four when it comes to words. What one editor thinks is wrong, another editor loves. So sometimes you have to choose between pleasing yourself, and pleasing the editor who wants to publish your writing. At various times in my life I’ve done both.
“You can’t sit around thinking. You have to sit around writing.” – David Long
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Glad you got home OK, Pat. You mentioned Texas Canyon and that reminded me of the last time we drove through there and all the other times when coming home from Nevada to Texas. It’s sorta a weird place, I think, but I never seemed to remember it until we were in it again. Until now. *G*
It’s been a long time since I was at white sands (’68 I think) but I do remember the white dunes and the beauty of the place. Some day I’ve got to see it again.
Thanks Sam.
The sands do look stunning
Familiar territory. White Sands is a beautiful and strange place. On some days you can see children sliding down the dunes in plastic sleds.
I’ve seen that Bob. What fun.
Your comment about naming military ships after national parks reminded me–Do you remember the protest over naming the submarine USS Corpus Christi, which was commissioned in 1983? They had to name it USS City of Corpus Christi.
Vaguely. But none of the details. It will be interesting to research. I love learning new things daily Kathy.
I have only been to White Sands once, decades ago, when my parents drove me to AZ from IN. My dad had been stationed close to there for awhile during WW2. We got there in late afternoon and walked a ways out. My parents didn’t seem to like it as much as me so we didn’t stay long. Other than glistening white in every direction what struck me was the extreme silence. There was no sound at all, not from the highway or any living creatures. It was cool. It must have made my mom uncomfortable because she started chattering away about nothing…which annoyed me at the time…and then we left. I should go back someday.