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"By the time you reach White Sands National Monument, near Alamogordo, New Mexico, you're used to mirages. So the porcelain streak you see among the heat waves simply can't be real. You still don't believe it when you start the eight-mile White Sands Drive. You stop where the road touches the first dune and run your hands through the incredibly soft stuff, cool and delightful. Off come your shoes; the next impulse is to lie down and roll. It looks and feels like fine sand, but there the similarity ends. For these hills of stunning white are wind-crumbled gypsum" (113). |