I contributed to She Explores, a community of female travelers and adventure enthusiasts, on their Landscapes blog. Read an excerpt below or follow this link for the full blog.

The singular road made of hard-packed sand slithers through the park in a wide, curving loop. The dunes nearest to the visitor center are covered in the desert’s finest and strangest plants. Yucca with its sharp, reaching arms, pale grasses with puffs of hair and seed, and short succulents bravely peeking out of their sandy beds. As you near the back of the loop, the dunes swell, rising high above the road in a proud army.

I read once that it’s not that the desert doesn’t have water, it’s that it has just enough to sustain the life that resides within it. Take away the cities and the people and the irrigation and you enter a world that is defined by a fragile balance of life and dust. Just enough water, just enough warmth.