Desert Dunes

I drive past the sand dunes every day on my forty-five minute drive to and from work. They are starting to become as familiar to me as the Mississippi Gulf Coast once was, long before Katrina tried to erase it. I can almost tell each individual dune from the others, like new friends whose names solidify their way into my memory. The dunes are red as fire some days, some days they almost glow orange, before fading to yellow on the tips like the sun has licked their edges. But the dunes are always the same shape and size.  Day in and day out, they are persistence in their sameness.  There are The Twin Dunes, Big Red, and Little Man, among many. Yes, I have named them.  I can almost reach out and trace their curves in my mind’s eye. They are like loved ones who age little by little, day by day, year by year. We don't notice until their years are apparent to the naked eye. The changes in the dunes proceed too slowly for our eye to perceive also.

 I know the dunes have to be shifting. There was a small sand storm yesterday and when I arrived at school the cleaners were sweeping up piles of rust colored sand that had blown across the courtyard and the hallways. So, the evidence is piled in the corners of the school where it sits until someone tosses it in the bin.  The sand dunes shift and change, but like loved ones aging away from us, we don’t want to admit it, because to do so would be admitting not only to the mortality of those we love, but also our own mortality. I do not see the sands shifting.  Big Red is the same as he was eight weeks ago when I first laid eyes on him.  

Big Red