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reaching for the sky just to surrender
For reasons that I don’t understand, Leonard Cohen’s music became my personal soundtrack while I was on the dunes. I don’t mean that I was listening to the music through my phone. I mean that bits of his lyrics would appear in my brain from time to time, unbidden yet still welcome.
In this case, I heard the line “reaching for the sky just to surrender.” This yucca will lose its battle with the movement of the sand, as have the ones that were there before and the ones that will come after. All of them reach for the sky for a time before their inevitable acquiesce. It’s the way of things.
White Sands National Park, New Mexico
photographed 12.13.2025
it intersects past the end
The long shadows and the clouds above seem destined to meet, somewhere on the other side of the dunes, on the far side of the mountains, maybe in Mimbres or Silver City or even Upham. Or maybe they decide to stay there, on an alkali flat in the middle of the gypsum dunes…
White Sands National Park, New Mexico
photographed 12.14.2025
a confused and ill-defined nature
Of course those are clouds, but isn’t it a little more fun to think there is smoke rising from that bush?
Or am I just being weird again?
White Sands National Park, New Mexico
photographed 12.14.2025
sand/snake, 1
If I told you how long I spent making this photo and/or how many images I made you’d have one of two reactions:
1. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? It’s a stick. One stick. In an entire national park of stuff, you wasted that much time on…a…STICK?
or
2. Yes. That seems about right.
I do not think there’s any middle ground here.
White Sands National Park, New Mexico
photographed 12.13.2025
like a woman lying naked on a bed
It’s been a while since I’ve gone on and on about how a song lyric came to my while I was taking or editing a photo, but don’t you worry…I’m back with another one.
The title of this photo – “like a woman lying naked on bed” – is from the Dave Alvin song “Out in California.” It’s a pretty fine song, and you should listen to it if you’re not familiar.
It also includes the line “If a man keeps runnin’, he’ll run right into himself” which seems sort of directed at me and my tendencies to get way too much in my own way at fairly regular intervals.
Anyway, here’s a sand dune, some wispy clouds, and (bonus!) a little crescent moon that I didn’t see until I was editing the photo but that I will pretend that I knew about all along. So if anyone asks, I’d appreciate it if you could continue the ruse.
White Sands National Park, New Mexico
photographed 12.14.2025
One Day | One Image 