Looking East

Kelso Dunes, Mojave Desert. 2oo9.

I think I picked this one more because I want to be back there then because it's a great photo. For some reason I feel like the clouds are really in motion, that they're booking it across the sky, flying south for the winter. The sand dunes were just these two small mountains of sand in the middle of a plain, with clumps of hard rocky mountains scattered around to the south, the east, the north. The west slowly rolled its way oceanward with yellowed hillocks that eventually crescendoed into heavy brown cliffs, off near the top of the horizon. They looked dark even in the feathery morning sun.

At the top, a bee hovered one foot above the highest point of the dune, buzzing its confusion at my presence before zigging off. When I got to the bottom, after leaping my way down the singing dunes, I poured a cup of sand out of each boot. Then I did yoga in my underwear, in the empty desert.