The Great Sand Dunes

— Lise Bérubé

“There’s no way I can climb all the way to the top!” I yelled to my companion. I was out of breath, my feet were sinking, the wind was pushing me down, and grains of sand were pelting my face! And yet, it was exhilarating: the sun was bright and warm, the clouds were racing in a deep blue sky, and plumes of sand were whipped by the wind; we were surrounded by hundreds of sand dunes and tall and dark mountains at the horizon.

We were in the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado. We watch others, and even some dogs, walk with determination from one dune ridge to another, trying to reach the top of the highest dune in front of them, so that they could see another, higher dune. Some were taking a different approach: sliding down on a board from top to bottom. We looked at all of them with a bit of envy, not wanting to risk our old bones in such pursuits.

In the following days, we drove back and forth from our Airbnb to the park, on the straight roads of the San Luis Valley, the greatest alpine valley in the world (according to Wikipedia), about 7600 feet above sea level. I was reminded of the geography lessons of my childhood, when, on the page, the concept of a valley had seemed so hard to imagine. Here, I could see such a beautiful example, that large expanse of flat land, in all directions, enclosed by the walls of the Sangre de Cristo and San Juan mountain ranges.

It had rained the morning on our last day; we decided to drive to the park anyway. We ate our picnic at a sheltered table and could not resist the appeal of the dunes. As we made our way to their base, we realized, oh small miracle of nature, that the rain had hardened the surface of the sand and that we could, almost like mountain goats, follow with a sure foot the ridge of one dune after another, going up and down from their illuminated tops into their shadows. We stood still and tried to name their forms: the reverse dunes, the star dunes, the parabolic dunes, the barchans (horn in Arabic) dunes, etc. We explored that kingdom of sand until sunset, but still, we didn’t climb to the top of the highest dunes!

Lise Bérubé graduated from the Université du Québec with a BA in French literature and education. She followed her husband, an American, to Tampa; she had met him on Christmas Eve in a vacation resort in Mexico and it was a “coup de foudre.” She received Master”s Degree in Education and French at USF. She was a teacher of French and Latin and a language department head for 29 years in Hillsborough County. With OLLI-USF she leads the French conversation SIG which meets twice monthly on zoom. When not traveling with her husband, she enjoys reading, cooking, gardening, and pampering her two cats, Jeff and Minette.