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My feet sink into the sand 

as I climb a small hill 

to see hundreds like it rolled out before me.  

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The sky is colored with the blue of the Virgin Mother's robes and the white glistens below.

 We are walking on crystals, touched by the gold of a fiery sun, held in the expanse of a loving mother. Life is as you see it.  

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The wind moves the gypsum into waves. Waves on a hill, hills spanned across 275 sq. miles of the Tularosa basin, located within the Chihuahuan Desert. 

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White Sands National Park is the largest gypsum dunefield in the world.  The white waves crest and saucers surf down, carrying children and adults on its belly. Echos of laughter fill the space between one mound to another as they run uphill to slide down again. 

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Water does not leave the basin, whatever falls to the earth sinks into the ground or drys out in the sun, leaving selenite crystals in its wake, and the weathered selenite is the gypsum that remains. 

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I am visiting during daylight hours, but the name comes from the night. Selene is the Greek Goddess of the Moon, the feminine archetype which the selenite crystal was named after.  

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Selenite is translucent with a mineral composition composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate. Two water molecules make up every grain of gypsum and the light, whether sun or moon, shines through the crystal fractal. Whether you are aware of it or not, these granules are cleansing you from the outside in. The subtle energetics at play seeps through to the marrow; gypsum itself is soluble.

 

I've got my feet planted in a playa that is still brittle from the water underground, even though a steady rainfall won't occur till the summer, three months later. The gypsum cracks under my feet and I note the contrast of rough surface to the smooth like velvet texture beneath. I lay my body down and there is an exchange happening, just as in every moment of every day, but in this moment, I am in a bed of gypsum. When I rise, I am a little more lost and a little more found;  my salt in the sea and

the gypsum in me.  

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