SOUNDS OF SILENCE

THE AIR WAS STILL WHEN I WOKE AT DAWN ON A CLOUDLESS MORNING IN GREAT SAND DUNES NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE LATE LAST SUMMER. INSTEAD OF DRIFTING BACK TO SLEEP IN THE DIM LIGHT, I DECIDED TO UNEARTH MYSELF FROM MY SLEEPING BAG AND WANDER ABOUT. ONLY A FEW OTHER VISITORS WERE STARTING TO STIR AS I GLIDED OUT OF THE CAMPGROUND INTO A HIGH MEADOW AND EVENTUALLY ONTO THE DUNES, WHICH RISE LIKE CASTLES OUT OF THE HIGH DESERT.

The sun was shining on the mountains, and layers of dusty pink and blue swathed the sky above the horizon. The tracks of nocturnal critters had blotted out the human footprints from the previous day, and the diurnal animals were just waking up. I passed a deer grazing and inadvertently scared some birds from their roosts. A single fly buzzed by

Great Sand Dunes is known as one of the quietest places in the United States. When I stopped to listen that morning, there were moments of profound silence in which my ears strained to hear anything at all. Sometimes the only noise I could pick up was the sound of my own breath. It was overwhelmingly peaceful—but my mind kept wandering back to my experience of the park the night before.

My husband, Andrew, and I had arrived around 7:30, just as darkness was falling. The low sun painted crisp lines on the dunes, the tallest in North America. Because of its reputation for noiselessness, I had anticipated a blissfully mellow evening, but a busload of teenagers arrived at the exact same time we did. As we walked across a wide, flat river plain, up undulating foothills, and ultimately up High Dune, the kids’ shouts and shrieks reverberated across the sand.

The auditory intrusions irritated us; after all, we’d come to the park to experience the wilderness and expansive silence. Walking those dunes with a bunch of loud teens felt akin to seeing the granite walls of Yosemite National Park or