Between Urban and Wild: Reflections from Colorado

A Walk in the Park

57 A Walk in the Park The tallest sand dunes in North America rise at neither the Atlantic nor the Pacific coast. They’re landlocked, in fact, nestled against the western flank of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in south-central Colorado. The dunes are made up of grit picked up by the prevailing winds blowing across the elongated pan of the San Luis Valley. As the wind meets the toothed blade of the Sangres, it sweeps upward and drops its accumulated load of sand, forming dunes that crest to more than seven hundred feet above the valley floor. The Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve is near Highway 160, the main east-west route across southern Colorado. The park also isn’t far from Highway 285, which runs north and south. Throughout my childhood and youth, whether going to visit my grandparents, to stay with Mom after she and Dad split, or commuting between Boulder and Durango during college vacations, I endured countless road trips through the valley and past the dunes. Always past the dunes. The brown and white signs pointing toward the monument (the area’s expansion to park sta- a walk in the park 58 tus was finalized in 2004) were well-known landmarks. Like the pale smudge of the dunes themselves as seen from a distance, the signs were part of the roadside scenery that cut deep memory traces in my brain over the years. Whether I was a passenger or driver, the familial habit was to travel the monotonous arrow-straight stretches of road through the San Luis Valley without stopping and with the speedometer nudged somewhere over the speed limit. One day, at the age of twenty-three, I was driving between Boulder and Durango and decided to stop at the dunes. Instead of blowing past the sign at sixty-five or seventy miles per hour, I slowed and turned. As I approached, the familiar buff-colored patch of ground at the foot of the Sangres grew into hills, then into a towering landscape of sweeping curves and rounded summits. The flowing patterns contrasted sharply with the sage scrub of the nearby valley and the jagged blue pinnacles of the mountains. I paid my fee, parked, and, crossing the small stream at the hem of the dunes, felt as if I had been transported out of the Rockies and into the Sahara. A plain of sand stretched before me, then began to rise. I hiked up into the private folds of the dunes between peaks of sand and spent a few hours up there. The parking lot, other people, trees, and even, at times, the neighboring mountains vanished. I scrambled up and down slopes and traversed crests. Huffing from walking in loose footing at high altitude, I would lie down and stare up at the sky, warm sand against my back like a fancy massage. Rolling over, I examined the stitchlike patterns left by the feet of beetles and mice and pushed handfuls of sand over the crests of dunes, watching the grains pour downward like a silken drape, the shifting arrangement of texture and dampness offering the illusion of shimmer. The air was clean, with subtle scents of mineral and salt, and except when a breeze stirred their surface to a whisper, the heavy dunes absorbed sound and a walk in the park 59 provided a near-perfect embrace of solitude and stillness. I was sorry to leave but eventually started plodding toward the parking lot, striding down steep slopes with giant steps. In the car later on, the grit of the dunes still between my toes, I felt more than a little sheepish about all the times I had bypassed that remarkable place. • • • National parks were not part of my experience growing up. I’m not certain what my father thought of them, but the evidence of my childhood suggests his opinion wasn’t high. Other than the odd day trip to the nearby Anasazi ruins at Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, or Hovenweep, family vacation time involved camping, and camping meant, as much as possible, escaping timetables and other people. Our preparations involved packing the back of the pickup with provisions and gear rather than making reservations and drawing up itineraries. We didn’t suffer privation or a lack of creature ­ comforts—­ we ate well and slept in relative comfort on foam mattresses and boat cushions rather than thin backpacker’s ­ pads—­ but the point was to get away. Developed...