Dunes, Death Valley (2011)
Death Valley National Park, CA

Ice doesn't come very often to the desert.  But when it does it expands in the tiny cracks in the granite mountains and small grains of sand break off, just like they do in the snow clad mountains.  Rain doesn't come very often in the desert.  But when it does it often coms in torrents of astounding ferocity.  And when the water pours off the slopes it carries the grains of sand down spreading  alluvial fans into the desert floor below.

The winds blow in the desert, more than elsewhere.  They blow hard, more often than elsewhere.  And when they do they pick up the grains of sand, now dried by the parching sun.  And they blow these grains into growing mounds.  Year after year, decade after decade, millennium after millennium these mounds grow into towering sand dunes.

We are drawn to the dunes.  Their graceful lines speak to us.  There is something about the soft texture and the sensuous forms.  And yet these beautiful mounds of sand have their origins in the hard, angular, challenging mountains above.  And if you look carefully, you will see the reflection of the dunes mountain genes.