In some places the sand is actually piled high enough to encourage sledding. Most everywhere it dips and ruffles enough to provide ample privacy for you and that significant other. Ideal for a moonlight stroll, too.

The climate is nearly perfect. The sun is almost always shining, the temperature's mild and you're hardly more than an hour away from a refreshing ride through the mountains. There's a nice paved road up to the beach, and a well-kept dirt road running several miles through it. It's the kind of place you dream about during blizzards, rainstorms, tax audits and other natural disasters. You can't help but wonder why some enterprising developer hasn't already put up a string of time-share condos and a high-rise luxury hotel or two with balconies on the waterfront and liveried waiters on the beach.

Sound too good to be true? It's not. It really exists, right here in the good ol' U.S. of A. You may have spent some time there yourself; it's a popular place. There are only two slight drawbacks, as far as I can see; they're almost too inconsequential to mention.

First, the wave action isn't anything to write home about. You'll not be troubled by surfers. Roaring, crashing, thundering surf it isn't. Rolling, swelling, swishing breakers it isn't. Basically it just isn't. At all.

It's on a lake, not an ocean. And the lake more or less leaves something to be desired. Well, more. For one, the water's a fifteen-mile hike from the only entrance to the beach - a slight problem if you like to take a quick dip in between tanning sessions. Or if you like to hide out chest-deep in the water watching the beach bunnies bounce by. Because there isn't any chest-deep and you have to make the trek to the water on foot. The road won't take you there. When you get there it's not so much a lake as a gypsum-encrusted marsh. Think of those plumbing joints you haven't checked since Grandpa was a kid, and you'll begin to get the picture. The water temperature varies between lukewarm and lukecool. Wave heights and tides are measured in millimeters per fortnight.

Secondly, there are these occasional overflights of Patriot, TOW and other assorted missiles. It makes for stimulating conversation. A bit of advice: When your seven year-old son runs up and says, "Mommy, Mommy! I just saw a cloud that looked exactly like a surface-to-air tactical anti-ballistic missile," you should take him seriously. This kind of thing can be distracting, but of some interest to the suicidally-challenged.

This most magnificent of American beaches is not in Hawaii, California or Florida. It's not even in Texas, Alaska or Michigan. Ditto Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Guerrero or Yucatan. It's in the middle of New Mexico. White Sands National Monument. Directly downrange from the White Sands Testing Grounds.

It's a desert, not a beach. Stark, defiant, simultaneously bleak and beautiful. An illusion of Eden, a glimpse of hell - one life sunny side up with a side order of heat prostration to go. At first glance, a setting made for dreams or romance; a second look, and tentacles of a nightmare begin to creep around the edges.

Don't let me scare you - the National Park Service patrols it and has provided a number of shelters for those overcome by the relentless heat. And you can tour it comfortably from your air-conditioned car, motor home or tour bus and never face the Fahrenheit.

There's little to appreciate in vegetation - a few low-lying cactus and the occasional century plant (Mexican agave - it blooms about as often as Brigadoon appears out of the Scottish mist).

But think what it must have been like for the earliest people who came upon it. The first to attempt to cross it probably didn't; their bones have long since intermingled with the shifting gypsum sands. Even if the heat didn't get them thirst and the lack of shade would.

Let's come home for a minute. We're going along day-to-day. Life is fine. Fact is, it's hard to see how it could be much better. Stocks are up, prosperity reigns, there's peace in the world, and my second car is almost paid off. Two or three times a week I may have won a vacation for two/gasoline for life/that special dream home/all the puppy biscuits my dog will ever want - just fill out the form and I'll receive BIG discounts on all 13 magazines/tapes/genuine imitation diamond necklaces ordered. No purchase necessary; no win guaranteed.

Okay, there may be a few homeless people, but they're not really in my crowd. I mean, get real - what does a street person know about cookouts and euchre? Yeah, and I pay more taxes than I'd like to, but at least we have enough bombs to blow up the world six times over and there's a certain security in that. And financial institutions are corrupt and failing, but at least my CDs are rolling over on schedule. And fees for medical care passed "Go" several years ago, and I didn't collect $200, but my doctor is a real nice guy who has a condo in Acapulco.

Sometimes what looks like a beach is a desert.

I'm deeper in debt than I like to remember, but my wife gets better looking each day. We can't afford braces or summer camp for the kids, but one was just elected President of her church group, and the other is making straight A's in an honors program; and they both still say, "I love you" at night. And I can't seem to make enough money to satisfy the IRS or my landlord, and we live in a crowded basement apartment when most of my college classmates own their own homes - but I'm doing the kind of work I've always wanted to do, and my blood pressure and my weight are down.

Sometimes what looks like a desert is a beach.

We get the beaches and deserts in our lives confused. We keep thinking the ocean and the lifeguard stand are just around the corner when we are in fact miles from the nearest oasis. Or we see ourselves stranded in a parched desert when there's a marina and free water park just over the next dune.

To see ourselves as we truly are, to read the lay of the land with neither illusion nor fear - these are the gifts from the sands so white.

And should our awakening find us in the middle of a thirsty, infertile desert, we can remember there's water in the cactus, and no bloom so beautiful and rare as that of the desert agave.