Great Sand Dunes National Park

Author's Comments

The dunes do not photograph in the middle of the day. I want to say this first because I have watched too many people arrive at noon in July and leave an hour later, sunburned and disappointed, having seen only a beige expanse under a white sky. That is not what this place is. This place is what happens at six in the morning in late May, when the sun clears the Sangre de Cristos and the ridges suddenly have edges - knife-thin lines of shadow that run for hundreds of feet, carving the sand into something closer to sculpture than landscape. I come in spring for Medano Creek. It arrives from the mountains and spreads itself thin across the sand in slow pulsing surges, ankle-deep and cold, and for a few weeks the base of the dunes becomes a mirror. The reflection of the field of sand in an inch of moving water is one of the strangest photographs I know how to make. Wide lens. Low angle. Wait for the surge. At night the park becomes something else entirely. There are no fixed features out on the dunes, no trees to anchor a composition, and after dark this works in your favor. The Milky Way arcs over a landscape that reads as pure form, and the only human evidence is your own footprints leading back toward the parking lot. Bring a headlamp with a red setting. Bring more water than you think. The valley floor sits at eight thousand feet and the air goes cold fast once the sun is gone. Go at the edges of the day. Go at the edges of the year. The dunes will show you what they are.

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