Great Sand Dunes

As the bus approached the site, the sand dunes slowly came into view. The tan speck at the base of the jagged mountains grew until I could see the dramatic lines and curves that the sand formed. When I got out of the bus, a chilling wind tore at my clothes and stung my face. We reached the dunes, climbing over knolls that got progressively steeper. Scaling the tall ridges was difficult - my feet sank into the sand, exhausting my legs while I made slow progress. The sand whipped my face, filled my mouth with grit, and stung my eyes. When we finally reached the top, we drank in the stunning view of the mountains all around, and then sprinted down the other side of the dune, landing in a breathless, laughing heap at the bottom. After we had our fill of running, climbing, wrestling, and throwing sand, we returned to the bus tired, content, and full of sand in the most unexpected of places.

Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes are the tallest sand dunes in North America, reaching 750 feet in places. In prehistoric times, a lake covered the whole San Luis Valley (the area between the San Juan and the Sangre de Cristo mountain ranges). The water eventually drained into the nearby Rio Grande, leaving sand in its wake. The wind blew the sand until it formed sand dunes at the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. The dunes no longer move with the wind, because the mountains form a barrier that they can’t breach.

We had a lot of fun in our half hour stint of playing in the sand, but being there also made us realize how difficult it would be to be to actually be in the dunes for long periods of time. Scaling them was incredibly hard, and even though you get to go down afterward, you just have to climb right up again. The sand seems to stretch on forever in a never ending pattern of ascending and descending, and you feel like you are getting absolutely nowhere. The Jews spent 40 years in the desert. I could only imagine what it would be like to live for so long with only sand and sky to look at all day, with no water, food, vegetation, or animals to be seen. They were completely reliant on God for everything they did and had to trust in Him for their every need. It probably took an incredible amount of faith in God to keep going every day, to believe that He would take care of them and not simply abandon them to survive in the middle of the vast wilderness. Going to the sand dunes made me realize the implications of living in a desert for 40 years, and gave me a tiny taste of what the Jews went through every day.