THIS is My Backyard?

The USA has nothing to offer me. This was my mindset as an American teen that dreamed of traveling the world. I grew up in Massachusetts, just over the border from Rhode Island. My hometown is small. My high school, smaller. I would daydream about getting out and exploring. When that chance came, I knew I would go big. Italy, Egypt, Australia. I'd seen enough of the country driving through it on family trips but everything I saw felt familiar and boring. When my mother told me that we were going to take a road trip with my uncle through Colorado, I wasn't exactly annoyed but I wasn't thrilled either. We had just spent a week in Denver and Colorado Springs; I'd seen the mountains. I'd seen the trees. I'd been altitude sick. What else did we need to do? "Sand dunes." My uncle said. Sand dunes? Really? I'd heard of them in Egypt but Colorado? I kept quiet and listened to the Dave Matthews Band on my discman while lazily looking out the window, my eyes registering nothing. A couple of hours later, sand dunes. They were sat right there between mountains and a creek. Actual sand dunes. We parked the car, removed our shoes and crossed the Medano creek; the only way to access the dunes. We put our shoes back on and took stock. These were not piddly piles of sand as I had assumed. These were massive, rising inclines of sand that stood before us. Standing in front of this deep brown sand heating in the sun, I remember thinking that only the word awesome could describe this place and this moment. Not "awesome" the way I was using it in high school but the formal definition of the word. I could not believe that I was here or that these were here, right in my own backyard. No international flight required and here I stood at the base of a 750 foot sand dune. My excitement turned to slight panic when I realized that I had written off this entire country. How many variations on these sand dunes were in each state, each city across America? My uncle walked up the dunes, growing ever smaller until he all but disappeared. This perspective drove home the fact that as large as these sand dunes appeared, they were still bigger yet. My mother walked a little ahead of me to take pictures and I stood there speechless. When my uncle rejoined us, we headed off to the next city for our hotel. This time, as we drove through the mountains, I looked out my window at the land I'd previously been immune to, excited about what other surprises lay just within my reach.