Four-and-a-half billion tons of gypsum sand spread over 275 square miles.
Hard to get my head around these numbers, but a portion of those billions of tons lies before us like a post-blizzard landscape.
A high-desert wind blows the finely ground gypsum left to right across the road, obliterating it, and then pushing the sand farther on to reveal the pavement again.
The scene through our car window is constantly shifting as we drive through White Sands National Park in south-central New Mexico. The wind creates infinite patterns and depressions on the alabaster dunes, a panorama like no other.
White Sands was upgraded from a national monument to a national park in 2019. It is the nation’s 62nd national park and the world’s largest gypsum dune field.
This field, less than 10,000 years old, is continuously created when rainwater and snowmelt dissolve gypsum from surrounding mountains that collect in the Tularosa Basin.
We decided to hike the moderately difficult Dune Life Nature Trail — a bit of a misnomer, as the trail is sometimes there and sometimes isn’t. Hikers must take direction from stakes in the sand, and sometimes they are there, sometimes they aren’t.
At one point, we can’t find any of the directional stakes, then spot one lying in the sand, an obvious victim of the constant winds and lack of weight at the base.
Hiking a dune trail is quite different from a hard surface. Progress can be slow, as pushing up the dunes can be an exercise in comic futility. For every two or three steps forward, we slide at least one step back. At one point, I’m laughing so hard I can’t move forward anyway.
Interpretive signs along the trail tell us about the geology of White Sands and the lives and survival mechanisms of its unique plants and animals:
• More than 300 plants, 250 birds, 50 mammals, 30 reptiles, seven amphibians, and one fish species call White Sands home.
• At least 45 species of animals are found only at White Sands, including the bleached earless lizard, 40 species of moth and two types of camel crickets.
• Some of these animals might be very difficult to spot because they have adapted to the environment by becoming completely white. These include three reptiles, three mammals, one amphibian and numerous insects.
As we sink and slide our way up and down the dunes, I have to wonder: With the constant winds, why doesn’t all this fine, sparkling gypsum blow away?
“That’s one of the most frequent questions we get asked,” a ranger in Las Cruces told us a couple of days previous.
The answer is that the area has a shallow water table that anchors much of the sand. And unlike other types of dunes, gypsum sand can remain moist even during extreme droughts — another singularly wondrous thing about this environment.
After hiking, we drive a bit farther, then stop at a boardwalk that allows those who don’t want to hike the trails to get a little deeper into the dunes.
Signs along the railings tell of the geological history of White Sands and the fortunate efforts of Thomas Charles in the 1920s that saved the dunes from commercial mining.
The boardwalk provides an expansive view of the dunes punctuated by ecru-colored soaptree yuccas and some deep green, spiky tufts that seem to be everywhere.
I spot a woman on the boardwalk who is the poster child for what not to wear in this environment: short shorts, halter top, sandals and no hat. Doubtless no sunscreen either.
I can’t leave this sandy wonderland without plunging my bare feet into this silky sand. Surprisingly, it is as cool as an early-morning winter beach (minus the ocean).
That’s because this white gypsum sand (actually clear but appears white) doesn’t absorb the sun’s heat like silica sand. So even on those intensely hot New Mexico days, the sand remains cool to the touch.
