Tighten up your shoe laces, it's gonna be a long hike, folks.

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A scenario I repeated many, many times over just as
many years was at the Great Sand Dunes National
Monument in southwestern Colorado:

When at the 8,000-10,000 foot altitude, there is NO more difficult hiking than at the Great Dunes. Even when I was twenty one years old, even when I was bicycling as much as sixty miles in a day, even when I was not smoking, even when I WAS smoking AND jogging at the same time (true), nothing tested me more than those World's Highest Dunes. One of the gold medal Olympic runners did much of his training there. THAT should tell you something. Seriously.

The hike TO the Great Dunes (from the camp site) is about a mile, maybe more, across somewhat firm desert ground. You leave in the early morning to start your exploration - when the colors are soft, the air is cool, and you are rested. Deer herds are nearby, quietly chewing on bushes. They watch you pass by. They see Crazy Humans running and dancing and acting very excited about reaching those huge mountains of pure sand... and they ARE MOUNTAINS.

Eventually, you leave behind the packed earth, stones, cacti, and deer, and reach a wide, flat, valley of sand. Further across, you meet a wide, flowing snow-melt stream running over that pure, tan-colored sand flat. It's as much as a couple of hundred yards wide and an inch to a foot deep, depending on the snows that last winter. Everyone takes off their shoes. It is pure joy. The stream is like meeting the Other Mother you didn't realize you had. "Veteran" campers don't leave shoes off for long, however... (THEY'VE already had their feet sunburnt so badly in years past, wearing shoes was impossible for next couple of days.) You are seduced. The cool clear water feels so wonderful and healthy and gentle, you forget that the intense sun is cutting through the water and boiling the tops of your feet.

On the other side of the stream THEY begin:

THE Dunes.

They start small... we call them the "Baby Dunes"... varying 20-100 feet high. Little guys. At this point in the day, you still have plenty of energy and the "Newbies" of your group think this will be a breezy jaunt up and down. (Veterans smile at their reactions like slightly demented parents, because we KNOW what's ahead.)

If you want to get away from the "Sand Tourists" (and we always do), you turn right at the "front" Baby Dunes and head upstream towards the mountains (which soar to 14,500 feet and stay snow-capped year round). This "leg" of the hike will typically demand another 2-4 miles of walking.

A couple more hours pass. You've been moving at a leisurely pace up the stream, but NOW you're feeling it - a little - and privately you're thinking "I need to decide when I've used HALF my energy if I ever want to make it all the way BACK....

.......Oh, the hell with it, I want to go way, Way UP THERE!" You bend your neck back, look up, WAY up, and, it IS a glorious goal, and, by god, you WILL make it to The Top... at least that's what the Veterans have told you, but...

oh my god.

It doesn't take 50 steps of climbing up, before you realize the sand pulls at you - grabs ahold of you - as you move. You lose most of your stride to the sliding, sucking, dry sand on the steep inclines. If your step is 24 inches, by the time the sand does its job on you, you've only progressed a difficult 6-10 inches. Even when you're down on "all fours" (both feet, both hands), it makes little difference in your progress, and for much of the day, this style is not
possible anyhow - since the sand surface is a burning 180 degrees. THESE DUNES make mountain hiking, even at much higher altitudes, feel like a stroll in Escalator Park.

Three hours later - HOURS - of very hard, non-stop work - up and down and up higher and down and up even higher and then higher and higher yet - losing most of your step every time - you've finally reached the HIGHER Dunes. You're not on top, but you're much further along. You can't feel your legs, your canteen is more than half empty, you can feel the sunburn hiding in your skin, but you're proud of your lungs for not exploding, you're thinking of never smoking anything ever again for the rest of your life, and it's AGAIN time to stop and unload the sand from your shoes and socks before you make what you think will be the final assault to the Top Peaks.

On you go. The enticement of reaching your goal gives you a little extra energy. It's not much, but you'll take what you can get. Each step is an effort. A REAL effort. You wonder if it's killing everyone else like it is you. You wonder if anyone has ever DIED trying this. You decide "Yes". But the sharp edge of the top peak is within view, and you hike on...

YOU'RE THERE!!!

Wait................. THIS wasn't the top at all!

There's another top, much higher, looking down at you with the powerful, subtle smile of its edge. Some see a smirk...

"I CAN'T make it. I CAN'T..." One by one, everyone else in your group discovers the same illusion. You don't have the heart to announce it to them down below still trying to get up to you. "Let them find out on their own." You want to flop down on the sand and simply submit, but it's too hot. You CAN sit down and re-empty your shoes and socks...but even then your bare feet must be held up off the sand. There is nowhere to recline. It's high noon. You've been at it four hours MINIMUM - and that's on a good day - and you don't know if this IS a good day. It sure doesn't FEEL like one...

You go through this scenario two or three or four more times. "False Peaks" we call them. The Newbies are griping and bitching and claiming we didn't tell them it would be like this! Well, yes and no. We'd told plenty of stories over the years, and many of them were retold during the five+ hour drive from Denver. They just didn't listen... they'd seen our photos are were, of course, amazed. What's the point of whining NOW? We were there, we were camping for a week, and no one was going home early. Anyhow, the Vets KNEW that the New Kids would change their tortured tune by tonight. For now, it was time to push forward to a real Peak... a Peak that let you look down upon all the other lesser peaks. This means another 3, 4, 5 False Peaks. It feels relentless... but you DO make it.

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From way up there, you can see across the entire valley and its hundred square miles of pure Great Sand Dunes. It IS glorious. It truly, truly is. No one takes it for granted. Everyone stops, stares, and hears nothing but the wind brushing the sand. Some hikers start wandering, looking for the Perfect Photo. Some photograph each other on the top... after all, THIS is YOUR Everest. It will ALWAYS be your Everest. And, in the quiet of this place, you can hear God whispering.

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You are determined to "be" there as long as you can. We begin shooting high speed film of friends running and jumping off sand peaks into air with nothing below in the frame. Who has the insanity to dive off like Superman? There's one in every crowd. Others are snacking, rehydrating, massaging calves, facing into the wind. There's nothing here but the purity of the Dunes, and you.

You know getting back to the campground is going to FEEL ten times further than what it took to get here - you've used WAY more than your "theoretical turn-back quota of 50%" energy. You're a little scared about that. Everyone sits on the top knife-edges of sand, soaking in a beauty that is like no other, and hoping the wind and the sun and the view and the success and your comrades will fill you with the energy you had early this morning after that cup of coffee and breakfast back at camp... hours and hours and miles and miles ago. And, well, it sort of does... maybe... for awhile. You hope. In the meantime, you all heroically discuss what it would take to survive a journey across the entire valley of Dunedom... but you know it would kill you. You'd never actually try it. It WOULD be a suicide journey. You already have the proof there on the High Fringes of the Dunes. Your body told you so. It's never done this before. Your body made you listen to it.

"YOU thought I was just here to tote your brilliant brain from class to class, didn't you? Well, WHERE WAS THAT INCREDIBLE BRAIN while we were on the side of this Dune? It abandoned you, didn't it?! I want a little more respect from here on out!"

"You're right. I apologize. Thank you."

"That's more like it. You're welcome. Now let's stand up together..."

When a serious sand storm starts up on top, you can't linger. Real sand storm are not novelties - your eyes, ears, mouth, and cameras can't take it - not to mention the sand caught down in your shoes, and the grinding its been doing to your city feet. The low sand blasts your bare legs with a hotter, drier feeling of "pins and needles". The higher sand rains down upon you. When seen from a distance, it all looks like a gigantic 300 foot high surf wave constantly curling off the Dune top in one direction. In these storms, you could hold out a drink can and it would quickly be blasted to paintless.

The physical "orgasms" of this day-long effort come when everyone starts running back down the high Dunes. This is running like no where else. Running down a 1,000 foot, 45+ degree slope, you will race at speeds you had no clue humans could actually accomplish. You think you probably aren't all that afraid (after all, you're on sand... what could happen?), and so...

.........................................YOU TAKE OFF!!!!!!! GO! GO!! GO!!! GO!!!!

People always begin screaming the moment they leap into space, land lower on the Dune side, and the plummeting run begins. It is half from delight, and half from panic. You are immediately running at the speed of a car on a side street... your foot tracks reach 20 feet apart... it feels like you're in a jeep on the highway and someone just folded down the windshield!! and, though you don't sense it at first - because the roar of wind rushing past your ears has your attention - that lovely, simple, beautiful sand is sucking at your feet again... slowing grabbing you at an imperceptible rate compared to the top of your body... and you begin tilting forward during this screaming, hyper, insane run.... leaning MORE AND MORE FORWARD - DOWN - as your feet slow and move behind your torso which is accelerating ... you're leaning very forward... 500 feet... you're almost leaning down.... 750 feet... you could almost grab a Kangaroo Rat with your teeth as you race down the Dune... the wind holds you up for a little stretch - you can feel yourself "planing" - the wind is screaming around you - 1,000 feet... but you're going to CRASH and you KNOW it now, and there's nothing you can do... there is NO other way to stop BUT to crash, and you're thinking "THIS IS GONNA KILL ME, I'M GOING TOO FAST!!!!" but you keep running because you must and maybe it'll change somehow or you'll luck out and fall in a better way than you are imagining, and you look over to see friends losing it - screaming and crashing and rolling and screaming and tumbling and flipping like they HAVE been thrown out of a car... and then you feel it... you're going down... and you scream

"Oooooooooh SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTT!!!!!!!!!!!"

.........But there is a moment when you're still moving at that incredible speed and your body has left the sand... and you're in the air...............

before you hit down...

...too bad you can't stay there like that...

"THIS is nice..."

...and then all Hell breaks loose as gravity and the sand grab you everywhere, and you're being pulled down, smashed and tossed and spun within a rooster-tail torrent of air-born sand behind you, and you can feel it grinding at your skin, and there's NOTHING you can do about it but close your eyes!! so you fall, and fall, and fall, and roll, and roll, and flop, and smash, and slide, and scream, and slide, and skid, and skid................ until you STOP.

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There's that moment of dead silence... like at the scene of any accident... when you try to assess if you ARE still alive, and, IF so, in how many pieces.

"I'm OKAY!"

It's time to laugh. Everyone else is claiming the same luck. No one needs a gurney. It's a good thing, considering your location.

Time to head further down on more Insanity Runs (which also means more UPS - NOT just downs - as you cross the ranges of Dunes) until you are back down over the Baby Dunes and reach the stream bed. None of it is easy. You've worked really hard all day, you just didn't notice it at first. This - here - now - is your last pleasant stop. Your legs are rubber. Your arms noodles. Your neck a string tied to a helium balloon. You rest again. Here, you'll linger till the cows come home. You have about 2% of your strength left after this huge day of exertion - my god you had no idea what you were facing - you have 2% and you need about 15%. Well, it ain't gonna come, baby. You're stuck with 2%. The adrenalin of those screaming Dune runs has worn off. You ain't got nothin'. It's been a long, hard day. You look at your friends. Everyone is sun burnt, quiet, and wishing they could fall asleep only to wake in their tent tomorrow.

That Last Leg of 2-3 miles - down the stream, across the flats, and up the slow incline across the prairie towards the campground is an absolute, get-it-over-with, nothing-fun-or-funny-about it, I'm-too-tired-to-talk, I'd-rather-just-die, self-chosen Death March. It feels like another 3 hours...

Once near "home", even the final, small 6 foot rise from the prairie floor up to the camp site ground, is more than you are certain you can manage... and NO ONE has the energy to reach out a hand and pull you up. You understand. You couldn't do it for them either. The group is moving at the speed of kids standing in a line waiting to get vaccination shots... and no one is smiling, talking, or asking about cooking and night plans. You just want to reach the camp site.

There, everyone guzzles too much water, drops onto a horizontal surface - any surface off the ground - and falls deep asleep. THIS is when you find out if you have sunstroke. If you can't lay down, if you puke your guts out, ache all over, your head pounds, and you wish someone WOULD just kill you!!!! - you have sunstroke. The next day will be a nightmare for you. If there's no sun stroke, in a couple of hours you'll be up again, moving slow but "better", going about quietly readying a meal, cold drinks, coffee, paper plates and plastic spoons. In an hour or two, the group is all back out again, and, over baked beans and Gatorade, The Trials of the Day will be told like competing Instant Legends.

"Oh yeh? You think YOU were running fast? Well, my EYELIDS were stuck open and FLAPPING!"

"Oh yeh? Well, I'm good at judging speed and I KNOW I was doing between 55 and 65 miles per hour!"

"Big deal. I PASSED you!"

"Shut up. I was the first to The Top..."

"WHICH top!!??"

"Hah ahahhaha yeh WHICH of those 800 tops we crossed??!"

"What the hell am I supposed to do about all these blisters on my feet? I WORE socks and shoes!"

"You didn't stop and clear out your socks every so often, did you?"

"No."

"Remember when we'd stop to do that, and you said 'Come on! I can see the TOP! We'll get there faster if you don't mess with that stuff!'? Well, next hike you'll know better."

"Tol'ya so! Ha ha."

"F'you."

"Anyone got some Unguintene spray for this sunburn?"

"Oh oh. Oh god, my leg's going into a cramp!!!!"

"Straighten your leg, reach down, pull all your toes up toward you!"

"Shee-it. These Nu-Dunies..."

"It's working...the cramp is stopping!"

"Of course." (Veterans are somewhat smug)

"You remember the first time WE came... back in '69?"

"Yeh, and THAT was the LAST time I got stoned before a NIGHT Dunes hike!! Stupid drugs! What WERE we thinkin'?"

"I keep telling you... that WAS a REAL BAT, a huge one, it flew down and flapped in front of your face. I saw it! You weren't hallucinating!"

"Maybe YOU were! But it sure SEEMED real to ME. I nearly had a heart attack, you know. At 21 - a HEART ATTACK!"

"It was HUGE!"

"The heart attack or the bat?"

"Yeh yeh yeh."

"What time is it?"

"Who cares?"

"...Right. Sorry. Gimme a couple more days to 'unwind'......................... 'UNWIND' - get it?"

"Very funny. More beans."

"Who's tenting with THIS one?"

"No way!"

"Didn't you find an arrow head out south of the camp site last year?"

"Uh huh. Sure did."

"Want to go looking tomorrow? I dunno if I'll be ready for the Dunes again yet."

"Let's play it by ear. I don't want to plan."

"Okay. I want to carry my camera equipment along. I'm glad you told me not to bring it today. No way would have made it! That extra weight woulda killed me. No joke. You all would've had to leave me behind. I need a small snapshot camera for THOSE hikes!"

"Remember to NOT buy an electronic camera with any magnetic components. The Magnetic Fields are so strong out there in the Dunes, they completely destroyed my last Olympus! Dead. The camera shop told me it was unrepairable. They asked me what I DID to it. I didn't know! They asked if I'd left it laying around on a huge speaker magnet or something. "No!" THEN I figured it out. I bought another, but I do NOT take it up there into the Dunes. Mechanical cameras ONLY! Guaranteed!"

"That is SO weird."

"I know. Oh! You ever seen what happens to sand when it's hit by a bolt of lightning? It has a name, I forget what it is, but it strikes the Dune and ENTERS it - fracturing the bolt as it travels deeper inside. Picture a tree branch, right? Well, if you find a hard spot on a Dune, it's probably the entry back-end of one of those fused-glass branches made by lightning."

"Fulgurites. That's what they're called."

"RIGHT!"

"I'd LOVE to find one of those!!"

"Me too. They have one on display at the National Park Visitor Center. And the display tells you to STAY OFF the Dunes during a rain/lightning storm!!"

"Well, duh!"

"People DO it!"

"There are idiots everywhere!"

"The thing is, hiking the Dunes is SO EASY when the sand is wet. It's like a roller coaster sidewalk. I've been out there AFTER a storm passes."

"I wonder how fast you could run down then?"

"Yeh, uh huh, right... You want to hit THAT "cement" at your - ahem - 65 miles per hour?"

"It's that hard?"

"It's that hard. You'd be Road Kill."

"I think I'm going on a Dunes night hike. Anyone else want to go?"

"Tonight?"

"Yeh. A leisurely one. Not to the High Tops. A stroll."

"Man, THAT sounds cool!"

"Uh...You better tell the Newbies what we do out there."

"Yeh, alright. Okay, we use flashlights to get across the prairie, then once we're at the stream and cross it, on the other side we each dig a hole in the sand... and strip naked... "

"STRIP NAKED?"

"strip naked"

"...and then we put all our belongings in the hole, cover it over with sand, mark it with a stick or something... and the entire hike in the Dunes is done nude."

"Nude."

"Nude. Naked. Au Naturale. Nada el Pantaloons. And, we sometimes use blindfolds - NOT because of the nakedness, but because we HIKE blind."

"Naked and blind? No way."

"Way. It's incredible. You're hiking in pure safety. You're blind and you're safe. What's gonna happen to ya? Trip over a tree? There's nothin' out there to fall over except each other! And you can't get lost, because our tracks lead us back - that's when we use the flashlight and take OFF the blindfolds, by the way... ahem... unless there's a sandstorm - which erases our tracks - so we head back, find our buried stuff, dress up again, and get across the prairie. I am NOT gonna sacrifice MY parts to a sand storm!"

"I can see that..."

"And I want to CONTINUE seeing 'it'!"

"Good one."

"Thanks."

"I want to put my blindfold on again!"

"You're a riot, Alice, a RIOT!"

"No where else on EARTH can you do this!!"

"Tell her about Night Dunes Life before Nature Gurl gets too worked up."

"Okay 'E.T.'... we're not "alone" out there at night. All the Dunes creatures live under the sand in the day time. They're smarter than us. At night, they come out. There are these determined beetles that hike for miles all night long. I've followed their tracks and never caught up to the beetle leaving them. I kid you not! But the best are the Kangaroo Rats. They are really cute and ultra shy."

"Naked?"

"Of course they're naked!"

"Veerrry funny."

"We go on night photo excursions too. Take all the cameras, lenses, tripods, film, and go out to shoot long exposures. Some shots take up to an hour. We're shooting by starlight. On a bright night, we're using moonlight. That's all."

"What are you doing while that's happening?"

"Hiking. Watching meteors. Counting satellites. Stuff! What the hell. No one's gonna bother your equipment."

"One time I set up my camera, got the exposure going, then went out in front of the camera. The film can't see you during short periods and because of your movements, so you stay invisible, right?, and I began striking wooden kitchen matches and throwing them into the air. Those shots turned out to look like crazy intense meteor showers."

"Dang!"

"I'll show you those shots sometime."

"We've seen GREAT, REAL meteor showers too. In fact, one night I saw one come all the way down - it crossed the entire sky - and it hit in THIS valley! This one HERE!! It was something. I could see the different colored sparks in its tail. Different minerals burning away, I guess. I was struck silent."

"YOU?!!"

"Har dee har har."

"Drugs?"

"NO! NOT drugs!! Jeez!"

"Struck silent BY the meteor?"

"Yeh. That's why my head is dented like it is..."

"It's a good look for you. This place IS amazing!!!"

"We keep coming back. It took me at least five years just to figure out what NOT to do. Plus, I'm having my ashes scattered here. No doubt about it. I've already set it up, right Danno?"

"Uh huh. I'm the one giving him the final free ride to the top of the Dunes. Pass the coffee."

"I'm looking forward to it."

"Stop it! You're creepin' me out!"

"Oh, pleez. No worm food here!! Burn me, crush me, let me loose with the wind and the sand up there where we were today. I can't think of a better way to go or place to be. My dog's ashes are going with me, too."

"......It IS nice up there..."

"Pass me your tobacco."

"Who made this coffee? There's GROUNDS in it."

"It's how we drink it here. Love it or leave it. Toughen up, wimp."

"Damned straight!"

"Skinny, get your guitar. We need some yodelling. I'll watch the fire."

"Yeh, get your guitar!"

"Ronno, you don't sing!"

"I KNOW, but I yodel, and I only yodel with Skinny. Love IT or leave it, baby. I'm gonna be lettin' loose with him as soon as he gets that Martin tuned up! You might want to go for a night hike now. This could git ugly..."

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As I write about the Great Sand Dunes, I'm writing just as much about Friendship, the Tests of Youth, Learning, the Passage of Time, and Mortality. It ISN'T all about fun there, or as we used to call it, the "amusement park" phase. That inclination fades after the first few days of camping. The mood of each person shifts...

That's what I want to write about next:

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If in that first few days you had aches - and you DID - they've gone. You've worked through them by hiking everyday. You're fine now. You've learned the basics of what to carry, how to hike, when to stop, and what your body can do in these extremes. You've passed your "Tests". You are no longer a total foreigner.

Everyone quiets down. The campsite eases, the hikes may or may not be made of groups, you may spend one entire day in the stream, another up in high Dunes shooting film, another might be in the Sangre de Christo mountain range behind the Dunes where there is no sand - jeeping over the mountains on rough - I mean ROUGH - paths while stopping to explore long-collapsed cabins of long-gone Gold Rush explorers (watch for bear and mountain lion), or walking slowly over the prairie watching for arrowheads and other ancient tools that were exposed during the last heavy rain's erosion (watch for rattlesnakes), a couple of you might drive far off the National Monument to collect fire wood for your camp, someone else might spend the day with a good book or napping in the shade. It doesn't matter. You've found another phase in your own way.

I've camped there with as many as eighteen people, and I've also camped alone. Solo. Both are wonderful in their own ways. Naturally, the "meditative" phase comes quicker when you're alone, but I make no qualitative judgment here. I put as much value on what we learn from and share with friends as I do what comes to us alone.

I must say, it's more disconcerting to be alone and know you are a four hour hike AWAY from the communal safety of a campground, knowing you could even easier face a Black Bear, Mountain Lion, an unnoticed Diamond Back Rattler (hiking alone is less likely to scare them off), or, you could fall and break a leg. These things go through your mind. That's one more vote for The DUNES. NO Lions, No Tigers, No Bears OH MY!, very SLIM chance of Rattlesnakes, and the bone-breaking "amusement park" phase is past. You know something of how to live out there on the Dunes for the day. You'll be okay.

Hiking with one good friend can do nothing but cement your relationship even further. You're walking in a beautiful and very neutral environment. It is easier to focus on someone else. Distractions are at an ultimate minimum.

I am not a religious person, but I am, when I choose to be, spiritual. These Dunes are the location where I most often and most easily find this part of me waiting for some serious "out time". To describe what that means seems impossible. I am humbled by the power and beauty of the place, but never feel unwelcome or an aberration. I accept the fact my mind and body must cooperate with the land and weather to such a degree, I am no longer an inflated version of "self". The freedom I feel - this state of grace - seldom comes to me - or to any of us - in the work and errand world of normal urban life.

Years I searched for "the" way to describe HOW I FEEL there. It was so unique, I was driven to consciously understand it. I talked, photographed, thought, debated, drew, etched, journaled, poemed, and listened to friends who wrote music about it. I finally wrote one line that satisfies me (and other Dune Veterans):

"I feel The Right Size."

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Funny how the hardest work that took the most from you gave the best memories that will never leave you.

Ronn.

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(This is a piece to which I will be adding and rewriting.)