Story of Dunes: Lençóis Maranhenses

Lençóis Maranhenses — Brazil is one of the rare landscapes that looks like a desert but isn’t one in the strict sense. It is a vast coastal dune field where white sands are constantly reshaped by wind, yet during the rainy season the valleys between the dunes fill with freshwater lagoons formed by rainfall and the rising water table. The dunes themselves can migrate over time, so the lagoons appear, disappear, and return in slightly different forms, making the entire place feel like a landscape built from repetition rather than permanence. Even its name carries that softness: “Lençóis” means “bedsheets” in Portuguese, a reference to the way the dunes resemble immense white sheets folded across the land.

What draws me to Lençóis Maranhenses is exactly that contradiction—sand that holds water, and a place that feels both empty and full at once. It is recognized as the largest dune field in South America, and in 2024 it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its exceptional natural beauty and geological significance. Although I didn’t find one single widely cited myth unique to the site itself, Lençóis Maranhenses already feels mythic without one: lagoons with no rivers flowing in or out, dunes that slowly migrate, and a landscape that seems to remember the ocean even while holding still freshwater in silence. That tension between movement and stillness is what led me to reimagine it as part of Story of Dunes.

4000 x 6000 px 300 DPI By Samanta, 2026