Dirty Duck Day

For the past few years, I’ve been the guy in charge of the Thanksgiving turkey. Whether for friends, family or a personal desire to eat a whole turkey, I’ve learned that something always seems to go wrong. Personally, I always put it off to the day of the feast, only to realize I should have purchased the turkey and let it thaw in the fridge for the prior two days. Searching the Internet for a miracle solution, I always seem to find a way to thaw out a frozen bird in a couple hours. This year, I’ve focused on prevention rather than last-minute mayhem. We’ve purchased our bird the morning before Thanksgiving and have allowed it to sit out for more than a full day. Due to our situation, “sitting out” means strapping it to the back rack of my Surly and bringing it along for the day’s ride. It only fell off once and seemed to enjoy the cool, yet thawing rays of the Arizona sun. Up and over the pass through Texas Canyon it sat, experiencing the fastest descent of our trip at 47mph. Boulders, sized in comparison to small homes, zip past in my peripheral vision. Somebody has tagged “You are Beautiful!” in soft, swoopy cursive across the entire length of one. A flower, making even the most stern and reserved person smile, dots the exclamation point.

Arriving in Benson, Arizona, we find the perfect location for our loosely planned Thanksgiving extravaganza. Crossing a bridge, into the core of this small town, we cross a desert wash, lined with mesquite trees and long grass, tracked by the seemingly occasionally passing of an off-road buggy. We pass by the wash, towards Safeway, knowing this will be our home for the next 48 hours. The grocery store is packed full of people, many of which approach us asking “You must be the guys with the bicycles out front, huh?”. Walking through each aisle, we’re gathering the food required to satisfy a small family on this yearly day of giving thanks. In the end, we pile everything together outside the store, to find a duck, loaf of bread, three yams, a butternut squash, a bag of green beans, fresh rosemary, a bag of brown sugar, sticks of butter, two apples, a mince pie, aluminum foil, a loaf of French bread, a container of Safeway mac n’ cheese, a bottle of honey, an orange, two cans of cranberry sauce, paper plates, a bag of charcoal, a bottle of orange liquor and a Fat Tire seasonal variety twelver.

My mouth begins to salivate through simply looking at it all. I imagine smashing it all onto a singular plate and then finding a way to get most of it into my mouth. Carefully, we load it onto our, already loaded, bicycles. Everything is carefully placed, or smashed, into its own perfect little nesting place for the couple miles back to our planned home. Wes’ front racks grumble under the base weight required to carry our gear. They now produce a more noticeable and nagging grumble as he loads them with our future meal. My bike looks pudgier than usual, with a loaf of bread being the only item without a secure spot amongst the mess. Right arm becomes the dedicated bread carrier, while the left attempts to control the two-wheeled steamroller. The bridge underpass leaving downtown nearly takes me out, but I pass through it collecting only a rip in the shoulder of my jacket, making it the 87^th hole in the jacket. Pushing the bikes through quite a distance of loose sand, through a bend in the wash, we find our home nestled between the steep walls of an inlet canyon. For the first time since we left Bar Harbor, we set up camp with the plan to spend the entire next day in this location. Exploring the surrounding areas, we find trails and paths, narrow and neatly maintained. It’s almost as if the trail was packed in, then manicured by a short man with a leaf blower. Paths are narrow and shrouded over in areas, allowing only 2-3 feet of height clearance. Animal tracks pick up in the sand, where each of the neatly kept trails end, coming down from the steep walls along the wash. The tracks must belong to some precious kit foxes or sugar plum fairies. We hope to get a sight of whatever we may be in the presence of.

It’s a cold night and therefore we both retire to our hammocks fairly early. It only takes a couple New Belgium 1554s and a temperature drop below 30 to get me nestled into my hammock. Listening to the occasional movement of bushes and Wes restlessly rolling around in his hammock, I peak out of my fully-enclosed hammock and see the wash slightly lit by the last third of the waning moon. It keeps the trees, bushes and sky a deep black, while making the wash an illuminated path through it all. As I drift off to sleep, I notice condensation forming in my hammock, but my level of comfort limits me from creating any sort of venting to prevent it from continuing. I’d rather wake up in a puddle of condensed liquid than unzip my sleeping bag for a moment.

There’s a sniffing and crunching of branches on the hillside towards the foot-end of my hammock. I lay silent and listen to the movement of whatever is out there. We saw quite a bit of trash and clothing up on the hillside, about thirty feet above us. Remnants of a few makeshift homes, and the materials that make them, are scattered above. I lay there, wondering if this is a person or curious animal. These encounters raise the hair on the nape of my neck, because there are really only two likely situations. Either there is a curious animal moseying around our camp or it is a person who has passed the realm of curiosity and has now moved closer to investigate or act. The animals usually create a fun encounter, while the person in that situation will usually not be there with the right intention. Slowly, I unzip my hammock cover and begin to peak out into the night. As I begin to move my head through the opening, I notice the creature of the night has stopped moving. I too stop and slowly begin to reach for my flashlight, which is known for harnessing the power of the sun. The creature of the night will not stick around for much longer. I quickly, but quietly, swing my arm above the ridgeline of the hammock and beam it directly towards the hillside. Two bright red eyes stare at me from roughly fifteen feet away. It tenses up and rocks back in its stance, but doesn’t break its gaze or position. Two feet tall, with coarse and dark hair, it breaks its vision from my flashlight for a second and analyzes the trail ahead of it, enabling me to further make out the features on the creature of the night. Two small, but easily distinguishable, tusks protrude from the mouth of this boar. It softly eases its stance, then turns around and slowly makes its way back up the trail. It does so in a surprisingly agile way compared to how I would imagine a boar would. Bye bye piggy.

Naturally, we wake up in the morning and instantly make spears. We’ve used our knives to whittle the end of some mesquite branches down to sharp and piercing points. In the end, we remember zip-ties are part of our repair kit and we simply fasten our knives to the ends of the branches. We have no intention to hunt boar, but if they have any intention of tusking us, at least we’ll be prepared. Furthermore, while Wes is on a morning walk to get some Coronas, he spots a rough man, kneeling in the long grass, watching me move around camp, through his binoculars, from about a hundred yards away. Wes’ surprises the man with a Thanksgiving greeting, simply to show the man that his presence is know, and the man quickly jerks the binoculars down and returns the greeting, trying to act as if everything is normal. In the end, the makeshift spears serve as dual-purpose boar/human safety devices.

We’ve decided to cook our duck in a fairly unconventional way. The oh-so-conventional convention oven isn’t something we can get our wandering hands on at the moment. Instead, we’ve had a plan for how to cook our Thanksgiving bird since roughly the first week we started planning this trip over a year ago. Sure we could simply slow roast it over a campfire or cook it one piece at a time on skewers, but we wanted to do something unique and memorable. We’ll be cooking our duck in the sand bed of this wash we’ve camped on. There is some prep to get everything ready, but the main task is creating a fire hot enough to keep an area of coals, sand and rocks hot enough to cook a duck for at least three hours once the flames are completely extinguished and covered with sand. Our shoes and socks come off first thing in the morning. The next few hours will be spent digging around in the sand and gathering dead limbs from mesquite trees in the area. The sand is warm on the surface, but shows its cooler side once disturbed with a step or impromptu dance move. All moisture from the surrounding area drains into this wash, creating a bed of damp sand. The coarse granules squish between our toes and create some light abrasion, but it feels good. Digging with our hands until the hole is deep enough to crawl into and dig around my feet, the whole is eventually more than three feet deep. Collecting rocks the size of cantaloupe (us mountain bikers call these baby heads), we create a floor of rocks, then compliment the outer edge with a wall of rocks. At this point, most of the hard work is done and the fun can begin. Wes is endowed with the power of flame and lights a collection of branches, of which I amply doused in gasoline. Regardless of how wrong it may sound, there’s something that feels so right when it comes to the combination of spears, Coronas, hand dug sand pits, copious amounts of gasoline and a lighter.

Teamwork goes into full effect. By afternoon, this fire needs to be hot enough to feel from yards away, which is harder to achieve in a desert wash than it is in the abundantly wooded areas in which we normally have campfires of the controlled nature. Team A is in the constant search for fire fuel while also making annual Thanksgiving calls to family and friends. Team B takes on the role of prep cook and begins slicing, chopping, seasoning, glazing and stuffing all the components of our glorious feast. “I’m ready to switch!” is occasionally yelled, once one of us has endured enough cuts, or coarse sanding of our feet, to want to join the other team for a bit. The fire grows hotter and larger as the hours go by. Wes has taken the core out of two apples and filled them with brown sugar, making me want to bite into them without any cooking. The food prepping area has turned into an attractive hotspot for bees desiring a few nibbles of brown sugar and butter, which covers most of the food. See if you can spot all five bees in the squash photo below. Wes and bees have a hate/hate relationship and therefore I’m delegated to finishing up the prepping, while he becomes the documenter of memories. Bees land on the food I’m cutting, occasionally buzzing to my hands or even giving my nose a quick landing. My approach is to let them be and hopefully they’ll let me be. One of these days it’ll backfire on me. The bees try to accompany the glaze on and inside the duck, but I have no way of explaining to them that they don’t want to be going where this duck is headed. Everything is wrapped in layers of foil, putting more layers on the bottom of the duck, which sits directly on hot coals and rocks. Once the duck is placed in its tailor-made oven, we place a damp towel over it and quickly follow it with all the sand we previously dug out. Within seconds, the hours of digging, fueling and prepping are covered up and unrecognizable as ever occurring. The only distinguishing characteristic of the oven is “DUCK” written and underlined in the sand. Within minutes, we feel the warmth of the coals coming up through the sand as we stand directly above it. This is actually working. Our duck is cooking beneath us, while we employ the out-of-sight, out-of-mind concept.

I enjoy the next couple hours by relaxing by our secondary fire and enjoying a few more seasonal brews. Wes heads back to the store to buy more candy and items to compliment our dinner and desert. Collecting wood for the fire, I snap a branch from a tree, but notice it creates a much greater commotion on the hillside behind it. I look up to find the dark figure of a large boar running off down the trail. I catch it off-guard on the inclined trail, and it seems to send half the hillside tumbling down as it bolts away. I reach back for my spear, but it’s gone from sight and sound within a minute. I crouch low and follow the path for a few hundred yards, but find nothing more than bedding areas and continual routes of intricate trails. Wes also has an encounter with an aggressive boar on the way back from his store run. This place seems to be teaming with boars, but I enjoy its employment of keeping us on our toes.

With only forty minutes remaining before we uncover the duck, we nestle all our veggies around the fire, wrapped in their numerous layers of aluminum foil. Conversations become silly as we sit back and take in the full experience of where we are. The air is crisp, the sand is now cold, the veggies sizzle in their brown sugar and butter baths, occasional scans with the flashlight show pairs of eyes staring at us, the beers are creating giggles and the smell of smoke is mixing with the aroma of food. All is illuminated by the flickering orange hues of our campfire, which drowns out the cool lighting of the faint moon. I’m not one to believe that this is what life is all about. I don’t see gain in complete release or lack of responsibility. I won’t sit anywhere trying to explain that people need to be free, exposed to occasional discomfort or sitting around a campfire with some beers as their duck cooks in the ground, but I do feel that everybody should include a moderate amount of these experiences in their life. It’s moments like this that show me how much one can get out of $40, a few hours in the dirt and a strong friendship to share it with. All the while, our veggies continue to sizzle as the laughs continue on.

Time to uncover it all. One full day of work is coming to immediate fruition within a single minute. Called “dog digging” from my childhood digging on the beach, we plant our feet and begin clawing at the sand as it kicks up into a granular wave behind us. While this may seem alarming or strange, my fingertips begin to bleed, but I’m far too excited to slow down, let alone stop. One clawing is followed by another, then another, which quickly reaches the clawing of an aluminum foil duck. Juggled from one hand to the next, the duck is out and ready to be dished, along with all the veggies and mac n’ cheese one could desire. With two plates of food each, our mac n’ cheese mixes in with our duck as our other plate delivers us our fair share of the butter roasted “healthy” side of our meal. Each dish cooked different and presents itself in a unique way. The yams come with a little bit of char, while the green beans and mac come out perfect, but the star of the show is the squash. Our duck is cooked all the way through, somewhat to my surprise to be completely honest. I’ve had high hopes the whole time, but certainly realized the possibility of failure the whole time. It came out with more of a boiled textured than it did baked or roasted. It’s somewhat strange, but the satisfaction of cooking it in a sand pit makes everything else, including the quality, seem trivial. We lean back in our chairs and dive into our food. At this point in the evening, we normally indulge in a moment of silence until we’ve reached the point of discussing how we can’t fit any more food in our bulging stomachs. With all the work and anticipation put into this meal, you'd think our moment of silence would be even stronger, but once again, the beers and company of a friend make the food seem like the smallest part of our Thanksgiving dinner. Smiles are shared alongside the fire, we begin reminiscing about the last few months as if they were years behind us, laughs overpower our uncertain futures that have stressed the previous weeks and cheers are put up in the air with the mention of any fun, silly, outrageous or thoughtful idea or moment. We’re happy and it takes very little for us to realize this.

Snow-Clad Cacti

We've chosen the most southwest route for a reason. It wasn't through the elimination of others options or even a desire to see specific sights along its route. There are many sights, state parks and experiences along the route, which we have looked forward to seeing, but they aren't the primary reason. We chose this route in order to duck below the feet of snow we would surely encounter if we attempted to cross Colorado or Northern New Mexico in November and December. Understanding the Southwest gets fairly cold in the winter and still sits several thousand feet higher than the rest of the country; we hoped it would be the lesser of two evils. We assumed Mother Nature would beat us around at some point, but prefer to take the open palm to a closed fist. I think we made the right choice and came out on top, but it wasn't without a shivering fight.

We've experienced quite a few cold nights over the last month. Days of riding where our breath never ceased to form a billowing fog and our knees creaked with each extension of our legs. Nights in Texas in which I reached the coldest condition I've ever tried to sleep through, shivering until my body could find a shaking rhythm to sleep to. We've both adapted to these conditions though, through both gear and logistical planning of camp. Our dear mommas have come to the rescue and sent us care packages of warm clothes. Every night, the long underwear, beanie, wool layers and puffy jacket are put on as soon as the bike rolls into camp. I look like a marshmallow once the layers go on, but lack the graham cracker and chocolate to make it a s'more. 

We leave Las Cruces with a massive breakfast in our stomachs, the wind at our backs, a consistently gradual downhill pulling us along and the desire to conquer some miles. It begins as the easiest day of riding on the trip. Averaging over 20mph, while enjoying the warmth of the sun and the clear view of distant mountains, with their multiple silhouettes layering upon each other. Although they seem distant, the strong winds quickly push us to their bases. Each set of mountains become a little more rigid. Each layered silhouette shows a few more boulders, carving out its edges. Massive grasshoppers sit on the warm shoulders of the road. They're over three inches long, but their thick build is what makes them seem so big. With a width of roughly two fingers smashed together, they lumber around and seem to like jumping towards the bikes. We find mostly dead ones. Two are attached to each other, dead, like the end of some tragic love story. 

I'm riding in a tank top for the first time since Tennessee. Everything seems a bit too good to be true. The weather has been a bit temperamental with us lately. Wind has taken up some sort of vendetta against us, so we know the gusts at our backs won't come without a price. Clouds quickly roll in. Gray consumes the sky, with black streaks and swirls preventing any sort of uniform nature. Light taps are felt on my arms and I assume we might be riding through a quick shower. As the taps bounce off my body and refuse to bead, I realize this is hail. Tiny frozen pellets drop on us and bounce across the pavement. Our leisurely day of riding has officially ended. I enjoy the dry hail, but it soon turns to rain. We ride through the rain, Wes in front, as his tire spins a wall of water into my face. His bamboo fenders don't have a mud guard attached to them and therefore a ten foot wall of water is thrown off the back of his bike once we start cruising. Road dirt is mixed in with the water and slowly grinds between my teeth. His fenders have caused me to hate bamboo.

After twenty miles of these conditions, the road dirt between my teeth is now polishing off the enamel between the forces of my uncontrollably chattering jaw. For the second time on the trip, I can’t feel my fingers to the point of which I can’t pull my brake levers enough to stop. Puddles form and are relocated upon us with the help of semi trucks.

“It’s times like these I’m certain there’s something, or somebody, against us. Somebody spiting us and pointing their finger at us while laughing. What have we done?” comrade Wes says with a tone of confusion.

There are three exits for the little interstate town of Deming, New Mexico. Our shelter and public park campground are both off the second exit. We begin to approach the entrance to town, as the first off ramp passes by. The refuge of this town, and the comfort it may provide, has been the only thought on our minds for the last few hours. At this moment, I notice Wes has quickly dropped behind a few yards. Slowing down and turning around, I find his face carrying a stare of disbelief. He’s already realized what has happened and therefore doesn't need to analyze it any further, leaving all of his disbelief to be shown through his stare. His rear tire has instantly lost all its air. Not the type of flat that’ll enable us to pump it up enough to reach our destination. The type of flat that hits with a single ceasing blow and ensures we’ll be splashed by far more puddles that we hoped this evening. I want to fight it, to convince the tube to simply stop this ridiculousness it’s showing. In the end, reality hits and we find ourselves underneath the bridge utilized by the interstate exit. Walking towards it, we knock our frustration back a bit by acknowledging that we have shelter to change the tube under. Within a minute, we realize not even this is true. As water drips from the bridge railings and wet snow descends from the black sky, the cowardly gusts from barreling trucks carry the precipitation under the bridge. Precipitation felt previously, now with a bit more projectile force.

Being cold is never enjoyable and standing in soaked clothes makes me long for my dresser, but the combination of both is often debilitating. The tips of each of my fingers are freezing and numb to the point of pain. I’ve stopped thinking about my toes because the numbing cold has enabled me to forget they’re there. I tuck my hands into my pants to warm them up in between moments of helping Wes change the tube. He understands. We’ve found ourselves in this situation numerous times on the trip, but never to this extent. At this point, we still need to finish changing the tube, get some dinner and warm up, pitch camp in a snow-covered park, and convince our bodies we’re warm enough to get a decent night of sleep. We’re privileged to be able to take this trip, but some moments we wonder what the hell we’re doing. This is the lowest state we’ve put ourselves in, both physically and mentally. There aren’t any smiles being passed, our surroundings aren’t providing any enjoyment and the only thing on our mind is the next location, regardless of where that is.

We went into this trip without any rules, but with two things to strive for. Our first striving goal is to complete the whole trip without the bicycles moving a single inch without being propelled by our legs. Second, without spending any money on shelter. This means no hotels or campgrounds and leaves us stealth camping the entire time, unless staying at a friend’s or with a Warmshowers host. We sit in a Burger King and discuss these goals, while devouring three Hershey sundae pies each. Our butts have been planted in these seats for 45 minutes by this point, yet I still can’t control my numb hands enough to properly fork out the amount of sundae pie I want in each bite. What starts out as a joke, soon turns into a plan as we search the Internet for the closest motel. With the incredibly appreciated help from my pops, we land ourselves in a motel for the first time on the trip. We’re drying out and showered, as we watch the snow continue to plummet down outside our door. Our evening was nearly spent shivering in hammocks as the clouds above deliver more frozen shivers. Instead we lie back in our cozy beds, as The Blues Brothers seems even funnier than I remember it.

Two days of cold set in, yet we’ve trudged on. The snow lets off, but still makes some flurry appearances. Days are slow and cold, but they pass. Every morning and night I check the weather in Tucson. The consistent twenty degrees of warmth it has over our location is a powerful drive to move forward. Creaks and cracks of my knees accompany the rides and chronic tightness keeps the legs restless and aching at night. The snowstorm has passed, yet the temperature rarely gets above freezing. Highway shoulders hold snow from the previous days. We taking turns following each other and I pass the time by watching how Wes’ rear tire tracks his front in the snow. Inches deep in spots, it seems unsafe and requires a bit of committing to. Direct sun has made it a soft slush though, which our tires slice through until they find asphalt. We pass by hills, blanketed by snow on one side and dry on its sunny side. Cacti begin to have more thorns and they too poke through inches of snow.

Our next, and final, New Mexico town is Lordsburg. We wake up to find warmer temps for the first time in nearly a week. Fifty degrees feels like an oven and riding is possible without having to wear more than a long sleeve shirt. It feels good to put sunglasses on and ride towards the warmth. We ride over the Continental Divide without a single foot of noticeable gain. I always pictured it as some towering pass that trumped everything around it, humbling all who approached it. Our route crosses it in a vast valley, where its only recognizable by a sign on the side of the highway. It may lack the grandiose appearance seen in postcards and motivational posters, but passing it still means I’m west of the Rockies.

As it gets later in the day, our ride only becomes more enjoyable. We’re warm, happy and moving forward. Slow movement over the last few days has left pent-up energy for the open road today. Wes begins drafting behind me as we close in on the last portion of the day. The shoulder is fairly dirty in sections of the highway and we dodge in and out of the approaching obstacles. Approaching a section of scattered debris, I feel as if I have a fairly good line picked out. Maybe I should have slowed down a bit more, but I only acknowledge that once the bang has already happened and I’m instantly riding on my rim. “This is bad,” I tell Wes before even getting off my bike. It produced the hasty flat that cannot be produced by even the most destroyed of tubes. I get off my bike and inspect the new Schwalbe Marathon tire I put on last week. With only a few hundred miles on it, it now has a gash across the entire width of it. It’s far too big to repair with a tire boot and its position makes it impossible regardless. The scattered debris are the reflective markers seen adhered to streets in low speed areas in order to slow people down. Boxes, or piles, of them must have dumped out of a truck during transport and now their shattered ceramic remnants make for razor sharp tire-slashers on the side of the road. Razor sharp guarantees that I won’t be riding my bike from this section of highway. We exhaust all other options, before putting out our thumbs and attempting to hitch hike. After over an hour, not a single person has slowed down, batted an eye or even acknowledged our presence and moved over to the far lane. I put on my helmet and hold up the bike in order to explain the situation. Most people drive big trucks around these parts and I watch as each of their empty eight-foot beds pass. People are scared and it makes me sad to see and experience.

We eventually have to call the New Mexico Highway Patrol and tell them the situation, but they show up in a small cruiser and are unable to help. Wes mentions that if we were undocumented, they would have a vehicle big enough to carry our whole family and us. The patrolman does send us in the direction of a gift shop employee with a pickup though. We ride the twenty miles into town with him, in the back of his pickup, as we watch our second goal diminish at 70mph. In middle-of-nowhere New Mexico, I immediately assumed we’d be waiting in this town for a few days as a new tire is mailed to us. However before it closes, I’m able to contact a bike shop a few towns over, pay them over the phone and have a new tire delivered to me at 7:30am the next morning by somebody who works for the high school of the town we’re stranded in. It all came together wonderfully in the last moments. This last week was a prime example of “that’s just the way it is”. Events, weather and encounters happen that are out of our control and are quite often unpleasant, but that's just the way it is. We ride through it, grit our teeth on road dirt, curse the soaking rain, break some of our goals, listen to our legs creak, feel our tires explode beneath us and carry on. We make the most of these situations and look back on them as necessary. Low points can be short and over in hours or chronic and seemingly never-ending. I’m not normally one for quotes, but as Thoreau wrote, “However mean your life is, meet it and live it.” 

Infinite Inedible Sugar

We've arrived at the White Sands Visitors Center a couple hours late. I misread the dates on their website, which causes them to close at 5pm, rather than 7pm. They've just locked the door as I set my bike against an adobe wall. Knocking on the door consistently for a couple minutes, somebody eventually opens the door. The method of being obnoxious until somebody inevitably notices. Tall and dressed administratively, I'm already sure of what she's going to remind me off. Backcountry camping access closed hours ago. She tells me to ride back the way we came and camp in a dried up lake bed. Doesn't sound too appealing. Wes and I start to run ideas past each other. They say we can't camp here, but we're surely not enthused about backtracking. 

"How you guys doing this evening?" asks the strapped ranger, wearing a circle-brimmed hat. John Gonzalez is spelled out across his name tag. 

We're doing well, other than the predicament we now find ourselves in. Probably not best to tell this ranger about our thoughts of getting into the camping area regardless. Might throw a few rocks into the gears of our plan. With a little conversation though, he wants to help us find a place to rest. He's retrieved a camping permit from inside. Watching us fill it out, he reads all the rules of the park to us, making sure we know exactly how lucky we are and how agreeing we need to be. 

"Seven miles that way." Ranger Gonzalez points towards the only road in the park. We can see the gate, otherwise it trails into empty darkness. "I hope you have lights!"

We ride through the gate, laughing with each other and the darkness. Exuberant. For a moment, we thought we would be sleeping amongst truckers at a nearby missile loading area. The well-paved road is all ours, without any lights in sight. We take hold of these opportunities by using the whole road, weaving between the dotted black lines in the center of the road and simply never looking behind us. Brushy shoulders give way to intermittent banks of overflowing white sand. It looks as if to be constantly overtaking the road, yet stops at a very specific line. Each bank forms a figure similar to a wave, before it forms any face. 

Pavement gives way to a road of sand in the distance. We brace ourselves for loose traction and the loss of control. Our tires only find smooth transition. The sand road seems to be smoother and less resistant than the dark pavement. The feeling even heightened, due to us expecting a more difficult ride. We pedal along lightly, admiring both the rough shadows of dunes and the detailed road right in front of us. I feel as if I'm riding on a frozen lake, without the fear of sliding out with every movement. All the thrill and excitement of sprinting on ice, but without the fear or consequences. Small scrapings of sand, sized between droplets and dimes, create depth resembling the air pockets in the ice of a frozen lake. Roughed-up car tracks mimic the rough areas caused by weeks worth of ice skating. 

We push our bikes off the road and through the dunes, towards our camping spot. Heavy bicycles, on narrow tires, require considerable fight to navigate across the ups and downs of fine white sand. There's signs, but they make very little sense. We find a route and stick to it, ending in a saddle between a big dune and her more humble neighbor. Shoes and socks come off, only to be replaced once we leave the next morning. The sand is cold and unfamiliar, but the peculiarity of it keeps me digging my toes into it. It fills the gaps between my toes and is cold at first, but slowly warms and insulates if I keep my feet in the same place. Unlike beach sand, it doesn't clump or feel rough on the skin. I imagine it polishing rather than scuffing. It feels like sugar, with all its fine sweetness. I lay down in the sand, on my back, and wiggle around. Creating the perfect match to my lack of curves, I lay there and watch the bright moon come up over the mountains of Cloudcroft. It illuminates the sky with a reddish tint when mixed with the distant city lights of Alamogordo. 

Sleeping out in the open sounds like the most basic and obvious plan. I imagine the sun rising at 6 am and immediately beginning its delivery of awakening rays. The night is still, without a gust of wind, and therefore I set up a tarp to help with finding immediate shade in the morning. I lay my sleeping bag underneath it, feeling content with it only because clouds already hide the stars above. Only minutes pass before consistent winds swoop in, without any easing or tenderness. Still and quiet night is swiftly replaced by whirling winds of propelled sand. It creates a haze in the air, countering the illumination of the large moon from moments before. The tarp whips loudly in the air, keeping me awake with snapping noises as it extends outwards. Guaranteeing my restlessness, it beats on me with persistence when the wind pushes it inwards. Sand flies in every direction, into every crevice. I zip up my sleeping bag completely and wrap the hood over me, creating only a small hole to breathe through. Sand finds its way in, crusting my nose and making it look like I've been up to no good. I find sleep in roughly twenty minute intervals, in which I have dreams of a mud storm. Hurricanes of mud blanket the world. 

We wake up in the morning to find the sun fully draped by clouds. There was no need to set up the tarp. I probably would have found sleep without it. We bundle up and are now able to look out at the massive gatherings of sand in the daylight. It's bleach white and only interrupted by small groupings of resilient desert plants. There's no variance in the grains of sand. All seem to be of the same minute size and consuming whiteness. 

This sand is different than that which most commonly forms dunes. It's gypsum-based rather than, the more commonly found, quartz-based. This allows it to be much finer than common sand and also prevents it from heating up and holding heat in the desert sun. One might think this is because it's white, but it's actually because of its heat retention abilities as gypsum. One ancient lake from the last ice age, Lake Otero, and a current lake, Lake Lucero, which fluctuates its fill according to rainfall, both have selenite crystals in their beds and lining their shores. Being water-based, it evaporates with water on hot days and then essentially rains gypsum on the sand dunes. This causes them to constantly grow, but also move more southwest. After learning all this, I can't help but imagine myself walking on piles upon piles of crushed up drywall. There must be a factory around the dune, where people trudge on old sheets of drywall throughout all hours of the day and night. 

We flip and tumble through the sand. Making ridiculous movements and gestures as we jump over the crest of each dune. Sometimes we fold our knees in at the top, nestle into a tight little ball, then let gravity do the work as we tumble to the bottom. I use our cutting board and chair in combination to create a makeshift sled. It works quite poorly and I resort back to throwing myself from the tops in haphazard ways. Each tumble introduces a new cup of sand into my hair, pants and corners of my eyes. I soon learn the night of blowing sand has filled every nook and cranny of my possessions. I even spot white sand within the elements of my camera lens, which was sheltered by two bags. We continue to run up and down the dunes until our calves grow tired. What started out as a run, has now turned into a slow lurch back to the top. Collapsing in the sand at the bottom for the last time, we spend a digging with our fingers and toes. 

Needing to leave by 1pm, we slowly pack up and throw on our shoes. The night's wind has taken a stuff sack and the shifting sand has buried a bowl. We search and dig, but they've been consumed, hopefully to be found by the next dune tumbler. Riding between the dunes, sections are crusted with a hard layer, strong enough to support us on our narrow tires. We ride on the sand, passing dunes and dodging plants, until we reach the frozen road once again.