Valley of the dunes

摘要

THE SAN LUIS VALLEY stretches some 138 miles from Colorado's Poncha Pass, where the Sangre de Cristos meet the San Juan mountains, south along the Rockies until it ends near Taos, New Mexico. Three times the size of Delaware, the valley is flat and arid and the epitome of an unforgiving Rocky Mountain valley—until one encounters the dunes. The Great Sand Dunes rise from the scrub on the eastern side of the valley. Up lo 750 feet high, they lap against the mountains like a misplaced sea of sand. Stranger still, the sands themselves give way to wetlands: riveting green oases that attract tens of thousands of migrating sandhill cranes and other waterfowl each year.