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If any of you have ever read any of Frank Herbert’s work you will remember Arrakis, the Dune planet. It was covered in sand so deeply that huge worms, the size of a train, could live and move freely in it like whales in the sea. Science fiction at it’s best, it won a Hugo award and many other accolades. Some truly horrible movies have been made of it that you should miss if you have any control over what goes into your head visually. Also it is why you should read the book itself, the pictures it makes in your mind are ever so much better. We have places here in the West that echo the setting in that novel but of course on a much smaller, but no less spectacular scale. The one most accessible to us is The Great Sand Dunes National park in Colorado.

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A huge expanse of towering sand piled up in truly epic proportions you can see how they might trigger your imagination, populating it with strange creatures and other-worldly adventures. The huge dunes create a wall that looms over you, soon blocking out all else, and you can begin to see where the idea for Herbert’s story began.

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During the mid-day light the dunes become almost featureless under the blazing sun and the color will fade until everything is a bleached white, but as soon as the sun moves down in the sky the colors begins it shift towards the red and the dunes start to come alive.

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At the end of day when the shadows stretch out and every grain of sand is outlined, the dunes are at their very best. The icy blue of the mountains behind create a stunning contrast to the hot colors of the sand. It is a breath taking sight and if the wind drops down and silence comes over the land you will feel like you have been transported to another place and time, even perhaps to another planet.