On the afternoon of November 12 [2021], my birthday, Sean and I continued to explore White Sands National Park. After our hike on the Park’s longest marked trail, we wanted to see two of its other, much shorter interpretive hikes/walks in the transition areas between desert, grassland, and dunes.

Our first stop was the very short (650 feet) Interdune Boardwalk, an accessible interpretive walk with lots of signage pointing out flora, fauna, geology, and overall ecosystem features.

The Ranger stationed on the boardwalk to answer questions was fielding a lot of interest about the 23,000-year-old human footprints that had been recently announced by researchers. They’re not something that visitors can go and see because they no longer exist. Ancient footprints stretching back into the Ice Age get revealed as shifting layers are uncovered in the dunes and flats, but then they too erode, vanish, and reveal new layers.

It was fairly busy at the boardwalk with lots of families and visitors of very diverse ages, races, and ethnicities.

We only spent about twenty minutes at the boardwalk before driving down the Park Road about halfway back toward the entrance until we reached the Dune Life Nature Trail. As we drove, Sean played the soundtrack from Denis Villeneuve’s Dune.

Dune Life Nature Trail is a one mile loop, with lots of interpretive signage like the boardwalk. But it is a proper trail up and into the edge of the broader dunefield. Here there are more plants and even a few trees.

It is rated moderate, just like the “moderate” trail at Guadulupe Mountains that almost killed me earlier that week. It’s just a reminder of how broad and subjective trail ratings can be, since this is a very easy hike.

In fact this is a lovely, perfectly delightful little trail.

It wasn’t particularly busy, especially compared to the boardwalk.

And it was a great time of year to be there, with autumn providing an additional bit of color against the stark pallete of dune and moutains.

The interpretive signage along the trail was tonally different from anything we’d really ever seen before at a National Park. Oriented to young visitors, the signs were written in the “voice” of Katie the Kit Fox, represented by a cartoon fox. To us as adult visitors, it felt a little hit-or-miss. But all of the signage was also bilingual, which was great!

The most striking plant on the trail, visible for much of the loop, but finally visited by the trail about three-quarters of the way along (if you’re doing the loop clockwise) is a Rio Grande Cottonwood whose trunk and root system are warped by its existence in the dunes.

It’s easy to see its various stages of growth and development as the dunes moved and shifted under it and it adapted.

But it’s clearly tapping into the shallow water table. In midsummer, it must be an intense bit of green in the extreme desert heat.

Here too there was a nice diversity of folks on the trail, photographers, families, retirees, college students.

We reached the end of the loop and dropped back out of the dunes into the flat grassy area near the parking area.

We hopped in the car and drove basically across the Park Road to the pullout for Playa Trail, an extremely short (1,200 feet) trail to a playa, or evaporated lakebed.

It was now almost 3pm, and as the sun began to drop to the west, the Sacramento Mountains on the eastern edge of the Tularosa Basin began to have their chance to shine.

As we strolled along looking at trailside plants, I received an alarming missent text from a family member in Michigan who meant to text my parents asking to be taken to the hospital. There was nothing, obviously, Sean and I could do from southern New Mexico except to check in with my folks and make sure they got the message. Scary.

Our stroll complete, we made our way slowly back toward the dunefield for the 4pm sunset walk. As we went we stopped at each of the pullouts to read the interpretive signs and take photos.

The Dune soundtrack felt very appropriate.