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