Dune

I live on the edge of the Oregon Dunes National Park which is about fifty miles long and sometimes more than two miles wide. There are parts of the dunes that look as strange as the moon. Long strecthes of the dunes are bleak and almost scary because you feel like you might get hopelessly lost and then suddenly you come upon a forest surrounding a lake like an oasis in a desert of sand.

Frank Herbert, the author of "Dune," used to come down to this coast and spend the weekends camping out in the dunes when he was a student at the university in Eugene in the 60s. He used to take LSD and his drug-induced visions among the vast emptiness of the dunes was the inspiration for his books. My piece of forest is just south of the biggest white blob on the Google satellite map below.