On the road for a couple weeks with Chance. We are trying something new. Camping in the back of the SUV for several reasons, but mainly for ease of stopping for one night and not having to set up and tear down a tent. We had a perfect site for our first night where we could look out the window over to the sand dunes in the distance and Orion working his way across the sky. We got up in the moonlight before dawn to walk out unto the dunes.
Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado — moonlit
The winds removed any traces of footprints overnight. In this place, it looked as if were on the sea.
Dune waves
Walking up the dunes is very slow going—especially trying to breath the thin air at about 8,400 feet elevation. When I had gotten ready to go to sleep, the air mattress was extremely uncomfortable. Then I realized I’d inflated it at home at about 700 feet in elevation. I’m lucky it didn’t explode! I let some air out and was much more comfortable.
Morning begins on the dunes
The sun began to clear the Sangre de Christo mountains that envelope the dunes. The prevailing southwest winds blow the sand from hundreds of miles across the arid land, but drop here not being able to go over the mountains. A stream nearby helps keep the sand here. The highest dunes in the park and in North America—Star Dune rises 755 feet which looks and feels even taller when you’re walking up. We didn’t make it nearly that high.
As the sun rose over the mountains behind, the light began to slowly work down from the highest dunes. The farther, higher ones in a golden glow and the lower, closer dunes still in shadow and lit by the moon and reflecting dawn light. Sublime.
My one previous visit to this park was 39 years and one month earlier. Jane was in graduate school at the University of Denver. Our spring breaks overlapped, and we decided a trip to southern Colorado and northern New Mexico would be in the works. After this dawn, Chance and I got in the car to pick up Jane at the airport in Durango, so she could join us for a few days in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. One of my favorite images from the trip in 1983 is of Jane sitting on the crest of a dune contemplating the view. There in the dawn light was a fellow traveler contemplating the scene.
