Park Number: 6/63

First Visited: September 23, 2010

It glistens, serpentine, under this desert-dome sky of sunshine artistry, thirty square miles of sand acting as Apollo's wind-carved canvas. And like any great creation, this masterpiece reflects its creator: hot, bright, illuminating. You can lose yourself out here—lose your mind at least—with granular grit clinging to your flesh, burrowing in your hair and weighing down your shoes. It's like another layer of skin, maybe a dead one, and maybe a reminder of what it means to be reduced by the elements. But unlike the Great Sand Dune sidewinders, you're not shedding this skin, only crawling back into it. A regression. A return to the primordial. You glisten gold. You become art, too.

Great Sand Dunes is ancestral lands to the Navajo (Dine’) Tribe.

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