Places

4 thoughts on “Places”

1. Gorgeous.

2. have you ever been to white sands?

3. I am trying to remember. We lived near Los Alamos for a couple of years when I was really young, and White Sands sounds so familiar. But in any case, no part of that experience has stuck with me.

   However, the Carlsbad Caverns gave me one of the most magical and lasting memories of my childhood. All those colossal stalactites, and the utter darkness when we turned off our flashlights, the plops of water on the cave floor. I can still smell the minerals in the air, these thirty-something years later.

4. there’s white sands national monument and there’s white sands missile range. the monument is large and is at one end of the range, which is vast. my second wife’s husband and my uncle both worked at the missile range. my uncle also worked on nuclear weapons research in nevada. he told me once that if he ever told me all that he had worked on, he would have to kill me. then he said he was only joking, but i saw the look in his eye.

   i went to the caverns several times when i was a kid, then went again with susan a few years ago. it just so happened that her birthday that summer coincided with one of the evenings when a special bat-flight program was being presented. we park visitors all gathered near the opening to the caverns and at dusk countless thousands of bats came out and flew off in a cloud to their night-time hunting grounds. the next day susan and i did the cavern tour. it was her first time.

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