Imperial Sand Dunes Cahuilla Ranger Station

Ambiguity, ubiquity, and sensuality combine in a most mysterious, magical way at the Imperial San Dunes in California about hundred miles from my home. They are located west of the Chocolate Mountains.  I'm not making that up.  There really are Chocolate Mountains in the California/Arizona desert.

The sand dunes resulted from eons of earth upheavals, the most recent occurring 200 million years ago.  The climate of the California desert region was tropical for millions of years.  As the earth’s crust in the region was pushed up, moisture laden air from the ocean was cut off from the region, and that combined with the silt dropped by the shifting Colorado River as it flowed toward what is now the Gulf of California resulted in this great expanse of dunes isolated from both the ocean and the river.