new mexico
“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires.” — Frank Herbert
Passing through towns and cities along the perimeter of the country, you’re required to roll through Border Patrol and answer a few questions: Just you in the car? Is there any marijuana in this vehicle? Where are you coming from? Where are you going? Why are you taking this route? Are you a U.S. citizen? Fear pulsates through you, and you fidget a little too much at every checkpoint, every time.
“The entrance to the park is just down the road, at the orange buildings.” After my second desperate interrogation at a checkpoint, I sweetly thanked the officer for directions to White Sands and sped away to the dunes, glad to be done with the berating.
As I pulled past the brown—not orange—visitors center, I gripped my steering wheel with one hand and a map in the other. Past the adobe structures, the earth glistened. I swirled my car onto the first white, gypsum-packed lot and came upon two tour buses with a collection of teenagers and chaperones standing outside. In the center of the crowd, a gold cross was raised into the sky, instruments were played, and everyone was dancing, or at least tapping their feet on the powdery flat. Boys and girls were snapping photos, smiling, giggling. I pulled my VW Bug to a stop, slung my camera strap over my shoulder, and hopped onto the white earth, eager to gaze upon the otherworldly dunes that the chattering group must’ve already seen.
It felt like a ritualistic experience walking into the loose sand for the first time with the chants and enthusiastic drum beats streaming from the youth group. Stardust dunes expanded before me and beyond my comprehension. The horizon faded into the soft late afternoon clouds, confusing land and sky. A sense of endless freedom was granted in the boundless territory. It was a new land to explore, devoid of the cluttering tourists often create. With the beating of the drums fading behind me, I was lost to everything but the moment I was in, awestruck. It’s impossible not to quickly disorient yourself in the sea of sand. The music was gone completely, and the vastness of the land seized me. I, mind and body, entered a great abyss. Then sirens broke my trance.
Turning in circles in the dunes, I couldn’t find where the sound was coming from. All I could see were the white waves and footsteps being swept into the breeze. The noise echoed from where I stood, and my stomach fell. I trudged back to the flat through the sand, and there was the fleet of police vehicles on the ivory roads, speeding deeper into the dunes. The gold cross was lowered, and the group gazed down the road. At the next salty lot, swaddled in crystalline hills, cop cars blared red and blue lights onto the sand. Families emerged from the dunes and gathered quietly. Looks of forlornness wiped across their faces.
Police circled a small, sun-bleached red car with a woman sitting in the driver’s seat. A man was held, leaning against a green-striped border patrol SUV. The scene was a stark contrast to the tranquil waves surrounding it.
The sea of sand at Tularosa Basin has to let out somewhere, and at that place might’ve been a ready vehicle with food, water, and a job in this country. The freedom sought in the dunes turned to denial, confusion, and a failed attempt to create a life in a new world. The little red car and the couple were towed away into a greater unknown than that felt in the dunes.