There aren’t very many people at White Sands National Park. I don’t know how many national parks you can say that about anymore. On the days I was there, weekday and weekend, I was mostly morbidly alone. The sand is lovely, but who wants to go to a beach without water? And hiking in the sand, I can now tell you from experience, is precisely as difficult as you might expect it to be. But this place isn’t about the common or expected and it’s not for everyone.