Travel Photography > Great Basin > Loneliest Road

So many butterflies, they have these big spots on their wings. Sometimes these spots have developed images of pupils. These fake wing eyes don't mimic the lifeless-looking butterfly eye. These eyes, they mimic the menace of the reptilian eye.

The peacock butterfly, a favorite of Eurasian collectors, evolved a number of wing-eyes, in all sorts of unsubtle colors, a dozen ways to spook a predator. But when it shows off its viper eyes, it rubs its legs together and the sound it produces is the hissing of a snake about to strike. A butterfly masked as a serpent.

In the late evening, Jane and I drive down from Sand Mountain to the desert study area, where we spend time cautiously looking between the wildflowers and atop the rocks. We are city people, the two of us. We buy lattes. So while it may not surprise you that I have learned something of lizards, it does surprise me that my wife and I can do this together and it's not even as a joke. She pointing at the stupid reptile and saying, "Gorgeous turquoise!"

While the lizard is still frozen, we share comments on how beautiful the dune is, the way it looks like a sword, or a snake.

Rochanne Downs, the cultural director for the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone tribe knows why this giant sand dune looks like a snake. She speaks with the sweet humility of a small-town leader, her words endearing and eloquent.

Over the phone a week later, she says, "Sand Mountain is actually a live being, there is a serpent that lives there, it came from out of the mountains and traveled to Tahoe Lake, Mono Lake, and then Walker Lake, but the meat of his body died and he was injured and his home was empty and he had been moving slowly ever since. So he buried himself under the sand and made his home at Sand Mountain." A snake masked as a sand dune.

Mrs. Downs says that Sand Mountain is a special spiritual place for all the Indians of the Great Basin. It is a place only the elders and medicine men of the tribes are allowed to visit. She reminds me of the fact that the BLM's job - a central component of their task - is to protect the cultural heritage of the Native Americans.

But things have changed since the off-roaders started crowding into the tiny Sand Mountain area. "You can't go out there anymore and pray over a two-stroke motor," she says.

Sand Mountain is one of the only dunes in the world that emanates a strange sound. It sings, it hisses, it makes sounds, and for years these strange sounds attracted the curious from the farthest ends of the earth. To some, this is a geological event; sand rubbing against sand. In the days when Indians migrated across the Great Basin valleys, this hissing became a part of their oral tradition.

Mrs. Downs says that these days, the hissing of the serpent can no longer be heard. Too much engine noise.

Her tribe has taken up the cause of the blue butterfly. She says, "People think Nevada is just a waste area that you can come to and thrash and leave, but that's not true. The desert is beautiful. My ancestors took care of these lands and I don’t want to let down the future generations of my people."

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