The Dunes
An enormous hourglass . . .
Maybe it was the last shreds of a dream, a memory of a favored place, or maybe my heart was making travel plans without checking with me. At any rate, I woke up alone in Kansas City thinking I was in the San Luis Valley of Colorado, sitting in my aluminum lawn chair out in the C Loop of the old state park, gazing at the sand dunes at twilight. Look at all that sand.
It was heartbreakingly real as my alarm destroyed the reverie, spewing news and weather at me at 5:00 a.m. The morning that followed held clue upon clue, riddle upon riddle that all pointed back to life on the road, the Sangre de Cristos, aromatic sage from the high desert, and an enormous collection of sand, piled 750 feet high. And of course there was music to connect it all. There’s always music.*
If I could go back there, I think I would, and I could spend the rest of my life counting each tiny grain until all my sand runs out.
Note: The same weekend I wrote this, my friend and I went to see “Rebuilding” a fine film set, by the way, in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. As I pulled all these pieces together, and as I thought about the time we spent in the west picking the pungent high country sage, I listened to Gregory Alan Isakov’s ode to the area, “San Luis”. One more layer of coincidence: If you watch the official video for “San Luis”, you’ll see Isakov driving through the valley with a sprig of sage on his vehicle’s dashboard. It was a familiar sight, and something I’ve done any number of times.
It may have moved me to tears. Just sayin’.
By the way, the soundtrack to “Rebuilding” is no slouch either.