Layers of Silk

There was nothing to hear out in the sand: no birds, no animals, no cars, nobody. I was far enough into the dunes that the road couldn’t be seen or heard. I knew perfectly well that walking in any direction for long enough would put me back at a road or parking lot, but it made no difference at all; standing in the middle of a sandbox that runs to the horizon in most directions, you feel genuinely cut off.

I’d walked out to get past the footprints, which at Mesquite Flat is quite the job. My wife was back at the truck with the dogs and our friends had gone somewhere else for the evening; we kept in touch over a short-wave walkie-talkie.

I was out there to shoot a wide panorama of the dunes to the west, but became intrigued by my view north as the sand transitions into something else. At 110mm the dunes stack into the foothills and the foothills dissolve into the mountains behind, all in one frame, and it reads like a cross-section through time. Sand that used to be rock, in front of rock that will eventually be sand.

An hour later, in a different part of the same walk, the sky went pink and I made Arrakis.