To See Life; To See The World

 It felt like as though my feet were sinking through flour that was recently chilled. Every step felt silky but so, so cold. Then again, the air was cold and the sky matched the color of the dunes at White Sands National Park. Everywhere I looked, all I saw was white. It was a very beautiful, very pale world that I had stumbled upon. 

Then, suddenly, the sun burst out and everything changed. The sky went from pale white to blue and the white dunes became dotted with color from all the shrubs and bushes and plants. 

My grandparents visited the National Park during a road trip that seems like eons ago. In their kitchen, my  grandmother had a photograph of herself perched on one of the dunes - her back to the camera. She was very proud of it. As a kid I would look at the photo and admire it but I never fully appreciated what my grandmother was gazing out at until I saw it for myself. 

My parents and I took a short road trip to White Sands National Park in March. It was a tour of wonders from start to finish. We traveled through small and then even smaller villages and towns and drove past  billboards that advertised "The Thing." We made a pit stop at a pistachio farm and store that has the world's largest pistachio statue. We zipped through Lincoln County, made famous by Billy the Kid, and passed  the Trinity Site, that my own hometown placed in the history books. 

But to inaugurate the trip, we first stopped at Bosque del Apache wildlife preserve. Another place I was introduced to through photographs. Working at the  Los Alamos Monitor eons ago, people would submit their photos of the preserve and I vowed to one day go and see it for myself. When the day came, I discovered it is truly a beautiful place. There were towering Cottonwood trees and placid wetlands filled huge pond fronds. We spotted regal-looking blue herons and ducks busily paddling around in the water. A real highlight for me was when my father spotted wild turkeys. I had never seen a turkey that wasn't de-feathered, wrapped in plastic and lodged in a grocery store's freezer. Spying on them through binoculars, I was shocked to discover they are beautiful birds. 

Photographs are incredibly persuasive to me. Show me a pretty image and my interest is instantly peaked.I still remember the pictures of Greece I cut out of a National Geographic Traveler in middle school and  when the great Life Magazine was still publishing, I saw a photograph of Angkor Wat in one of its issues and immediately decided I would go someday. After all, as the motto for that magazine states: "To see life; to see the world."