On the dunes

The more I explore and photograph White Sands National Monument for my next book, the more convinced I am of how magical the place truly is. I love making pictures there while hiking across the dunes, experiencing the light and observing others relating to that magnificent landscape. For me the experience there is a contemplative one.

The great writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau was fond of walking and spent his life doing as much of it as he possibly could. He writes,

“Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a west as distant and as fair as that into which the Sun goes down. He appears to migrate westward daily and tempt us to follow him . . . We dream all night of those mountain ridges in the horizon, though they may be of vapor only, which were last gilded by His rays.”