maybe it’s a petrified forest

or maybe the sand is a living indestructible thing with malicious intent and the power to turn you into sand and when you become sand you crumble and are forced to exist as part of a living evil sand dune and your soul goes into the mix with all the other poor lost devoured souls whose RAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGEE and despair and general melancholy power the unstoppable menace until the world has been consumed

(yes, I know the photo isn’t in America- but we have the same type of erosion spires in Bryce Nat Pk and elsewhere…)