The White Sands National Monument is a U.S. National Monument located about 25 km (16 mi) southwest of Alamogordo in western Otero County and northeastern Doña Ana County in the state of New Mexico, at an elevation of 4235 feet (1291 m). The area is in the mountain-ringed Tularosa Basin and comprises the southern part of a 710-km² (275-mi²) field of white sand dunes composed of gypsum crystals.
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“It’s all sorts of middle-aged white men in suits—forests of middle-aged men in dark suits. All slightly red-faced from eating and drinking too much.”
—Diane Abbott (b. 1953)
“That land is like an Eagle, whose young gaze
Feeds on the noontide beam, whose golden plume
Floats moveless on the storm, and in the blaze
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An epitaph of glory for the tomb
Of murdered Europe may thy fame be made,
Great People! as the sands shalt thou become;
Thy growth is swift as morn, when night must fade;
The multitudinous Earth shall sleep beneath thy shade.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“... the Wall became a magnet for citizens of every generation, class, race, and relationship to the war perhaps because it is the only great public monument that allows the anesthetized holes in the heart to fill with a truly national grief.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The monument of death will outlast the memory of the dead. The Pyramids do not tell the tale which was confided to them; the living fact commemorates itself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)