Note: this is continued from the previous post, “Day Six, in words”. You’ll want to read that one first.
It was about 4 AM, with us all asleep under the stars, that we started feeling the first few raindrops…it had begun to rain again. We all woke up quickly enough and scattered to the tents; somehow, Grace, who’d left hours before to spend the night in a bit more solitude on top of a dune, stuck it out and wasn’t bothered by the rain.
My alarm went off at 6 AM. Painful, but I knew it would be worth it; I shucked off my sleeping back and stepped outside…and to say it was worth it was an understatement. It was stunning. The clouds had cleared off, the predawn twilight was gathering around the far-off mountains, and we were there in a sea of crystalline white dunes, our camp so small and insignificant compared to everything around us.
I climbed the nearest dune, then the nearest one after that, and the nearest one after that, and started taking pictures…and just having my breath completely taken away by all the sights around me. After a while, I could stand it no longer, and woke up the others, telling them to at least just poke their heads outside their tents. Nobody did just that, though — after they saw what was outside, every single one of them crawled outside their tents and started looking around. Kike and Flo climbed the biggest dune they could find, Jeff started taking more pictures, Grace walked across a dune ridgeline, and Katya stood atop a dune and raised her hands for joy. Me, I walked around breathless still, taking pictures, completely and totally unable to believe where I was. It really was like nothing else in the entire world.
Words can’t possibly express what this was like…my last posting was far, far longer, but it was this brief hour or so that I remember the most by far. It wasn’t even all that long; we packed up our tents soon and went back to the car once the sun was completely up, as we particularly didn’t want another encounter with the ranger and his book of tickets.
But this time, these amazing moments, were incredible in a way few other things ever have been. As evidence, all I can offer you is these few photos, and they’re only a few of the hundreds I shot in just a brief hour or so. Perhaps this is why I shoot pictures: they are the only way I know of to share some of the experiences you can have in this life.
The rest of the day was, honestly, just plain long: since it was Friday night, I’d reserved a hotel a few days before (due to my challenging experience finding one the first weekend I was out), and I was a bit…optimistic…in the amount of distance I’d planned on covering. In other words, New Mexico is freakin’ huge north-to-south, and the journey from Las Cruces up to Taos, particularly through the mountain backroads, is incredibly long. They’re beautiful, unquestionably beautiful; the sky is broad, the high mountains are lush and green, and you feel like you’re one of the very few souls who has chosen that particular road. But covering well over six hundred miles in a day takes a long time, and it forces me not to stop nearly as much (as usually I’m stopping every half hour or so to take pictures, just walk out among the mountains, or do something)…at the end of the day, pulling into Taos was a blessed relief.
More photos of my trip through the mountains this day soon — but, for now, these are the ones I want you to have.
Day 7: (Friday, August 10, 2007) White Sands National Monument, NM to Taos, NM.
Miles: 2408.9 + 664.2 = 3073.1 total. Current distance from home: 1,209 miles.
Photos: 1,236 (16.8 GB) + 332 (4.3 GB) = 1,568 (21.1 GB) total.
Next up: a journey through the mountains of Colorado…and to a well-deserved day of rest at my parents’ place in Estes Park, CO.
Leave a Reply