In June 2016 Charlotte and I visited Great Sand Dunes National Park with my parents. Charlotte was ten, and had just wrapped up fourth grade. We were all excited to check out this national park for the first time.

The Great Sand Dunes, with their amazing geological story of formation, are nestled in a pocket at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The dunes we currently see are around 12,000 years old, but sand found hundreds of feet down indicates that the dunes originally formed at least 400,000 years ago. The Great Sand Dunes are the tallest dunes in North America. Their height is achieved by prevailing winds moving sand against the mountain range, while winds from the opposite direction prevent the sand from moving into and between the mountains. Add to that the Sand and Medano Creeks carrying sand like a conveyor belt to the San Luis Valley floor, making sand continually available for the winds to blow toward the dunes, and you have the dramatic and unlikely juxtaposition of windswept beige dunes towering right up against the alpine backdrop of dark greens and browns. 
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The first afternoon we spent time at Medano Creek, which runs east and south of the dunes. This is a prime hangout for children and grown-ups alike. It was like a day at the beach: warm splashy water and soft wet sand between our toes. Watching the creek, we noticed an interesting phenomena: the continual movement of the water would form groups of tiny V-shaped ridges of sand. Water would build behind the ridges until it overflowed those mini-dams and the water surged forward in little waves. Then the process would start again. This is called surge flow.
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The next day we explored the dunes themselves. We had heard about renting sand boards to surf down the dunes, but we preferred a little DIY, especially as the rental rates were on the pricey side. My dad had packed a couple of burly sleds and we used some surf wax on the bottoms. We trudged up the nearest dune, hauling the cumbersome sleds in the hot sun. The dune was deceptively high, and we were huffing, puffing, sweating and wishing for a cold beverage by the time we reached the top. Charlotte, excited for the purpose of all that climbing, jumped into one of the sleds and my dad gave her a push. The sled didn’t budge. We tried on a steeper section and it slid a disappointing few feet before bogging down in the sand. There are times to DIY, and there are times to pay the hefty sand board rental fee.

All was not lost. We had some fun running down the dune at full tilt, since falling into sand doesn’t pack much of a consequence. We watched people hiking up and down Star Dune, the tallest of the dunes. Star dunes form from the wind blowing from several directions, and these dunes have three arms or more. 

After braving the mosquitoes that hovered near the shrubbery along one area of Medano, 
we thankfully headed indoors to the Visitors Center. One of my favorite displays was two photos of the dunes, hung one above the other. The first one was from 1873 and the second was a more recent shot. (You can scroll down this page to see the current comparison photos, the current-day pic taken in 2020.) Though dune sizes and shapes morph over time, and even day to day, the elements that create the Great Sand Dunes are consistent enough that the overall contours and placement are very similar over the span of time. I was intrigued to learn that the water flowing through the Sand and Medano Creeks eventually dissipates south and west of the mountains, creating ecosystems such as the wetlands (scroll to bottom) in the San Luis Valley, home to species such as sandhill cranes and shore birds. The entire park as a whole encompasses many ecosystems, and the way the systems work together and support one another is fascinating.

Our trip to the park was full of fun and learning, but our story would not be complete without telling the discovery of The Pies.

My mom had managed to locate the one restaurant within the park boundary, called The Oasis. That first night, we four hungry folks headed into this 1950’s-reminiscent diner: paper placemats, vinyl chairs and tablecloths, linoleum floor, and knotty-pine paneling covering walls and ceiling. The food was decent, and we were partway through dinner when I saw my mom’s dessert-wheels start turning. My mother is a verifiable dessert connoisseur. She pointed out the  back side of the dessert menu to Charlotte, and then they both dropped their forks. The list of homemade pies was a mile long, and those two were in seventh heaven. When their slices of paradise were delivered, rich peanut butter chocolate and fluffy lemon meringue enveloped in crusts flakey and golden, Charlotte’s eyes were bigger than the pie plates. I think there were tears of joy in my mom’s. 

After wrapping up at the Visitor’s Center the next day, can you guess where those two wanted to go for lunch? Yep. Back to The Oasis. This time they didn’t even make a pretense at the meal. They located the pie case, stuffed with close to two dozen mouth-watering creations, and remained there for roughly half an hour discussing the merits of each pie, agonizing over which one to choose. My dad and I sat at our table solving the world’s problems. 

At last, pie choices made and eaten, we walked out of The Oasis. We drove down the road, and out of the park, the pie-gals dreaming about meringue and fruit, chocolate and whipped cream. 

The drive to play freely is a basic, biological drive. Lack of free play may not kill the physical body, as would lack of air, food, or water, but it kills the spirit and stunts mental growth.
-Peter Gray, American Psychologist

Play?
I was breathing hard, feet wide, muscles poised to run in any direction, my heart pounding. A bead of sweat trickled down my chest. All of a sudden I felt weird. What was going on? I noticed I was smiling, and then it hit me. I was, ahem, having FUN! My dad and I were on the racquetball court, and I was having a blast: unaware of time, totally focused on the ball and getting my butt across the court in time to return it. My dad won most every point, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was losing myself in the game and that smile on my face. Welcome to the amazing world of play.

Play is unstructured time, where one is lost in the flow - and play can mean a different thing for each person. National Institute for Play - What Is Play?
For some people it is dancing, for others, telling jokes, doing a puzzle, or cooking a new recipe. It is about creativity, innovation, and having fun. 
Here are just a few ideas for play:

• Throw a living-room picnic in January, play beach tunes
• Paint - on canvas, a wall, or a pair of sneakers
• Engage with your dog, cat or cockateel
• Read a book
• Have a snowball fight

Check out more: 70 Play Ideas for More Fun as an Adult

What’s It Got to Do With Me?
Animals play when young in order to develop skills they’ll need as adults - survival skills like hunting and defense. But humans benefit from play throughout their lives. So keep on playin’!! Take a look at some of the great stuff we get from play:

• Keeps you feeling good - mentally and physically
• Improves relationships (partner, friends, co-workers)
• Decreases stress
• Improves brain function
• Stimulates creativity
• Enhances problem-solving capabilities

More: Help Guide - Benefits of Play

Vital for our Brains
Think you (or kids) could skip play? Play researcher Stuart Brown found that the gunman in the 1966 Texas Tower shooting had been severely play deprived, as had other young men imprisoned for murder.
Read more: National Institute for Play: Our History 
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​Originally published Aug 25 2022

​The solar eclipse this past Monday was something to see. From Steamboat Springs the moon obscured the sun just 59%, yet at the peak, about 12:38 pm local time, the quality of sunshine seemed thin, with a bluish cast, and there was a sharpness to the temperature. Thanks to the kindness of a friend I had a pair of eclipse glasses to share and several of us gathered in the office parking lot to ogle the rare event. 

There is something of David and Goliath in the gentle, unassuming moon blocking the vast light of the sun. Days before the eclipse as people travel to paths of totality, it starts to feel like a championship event, everyone rooting for the underdog.

Watching from earth, I find the eclipse itself uniquely amazing, and also uncanny. There’s a biological reason for this reaction. In preparation for the 2017 eclipse, I learned that the abnormality of the darkness in the middle of the day puts our primal “lizard brain” (also “reptilian brain,” metaphorically referring to our brain stem, cerebellum and basal ganglia) on high alert. Though we have a prefrontal cortex understanding of what is happening, our cognitive grasp isn’t getting through to our basic functions which say: “Something is not right, be aware, possible danger!”

In 2017, the eclipse occurred on August 21st, which was also a Monday. My daughter was starting 6th grade the next day, and she and her friend were all about decorating their school lockers right after the eclipse. We headed to Little Toots Park for a good view. Groups of people spread blankets on the grass like us, while others were standing around. Kids were running through the park, so excited. When the moon began to slide over the sun’s surface, there was great excitement, and I could feel the temperature plummet so much I put on my warm jacket. The coverage that day in Steamboat was 93.6% - so it wasn’t completely dark but more dusk-like. I listened, and as I had read they might be, the birds were quiet. We humans - kids and grown-ups - were momentarily hushed as well as we stared up through our eclipse glasses. The dark, the cold, the silence, and the awe combined into an eerie sense of wonder. 

In both 2017 and last Monday, I thought of other people watching from all over the globe. I thought of the people I knew who had traveled to experience the full darkness of totality. It may sound cliché, but in the moments of the eclipse, there is a common connection as we behold the amazingness in the sky.  

​A rowing regatta - I’d never been to one before. I was here to watch my cousin Michael’s team, and I was in full-blown teenage awe. Tall, muscular college-aged women and men rowing long narrow boats across the water. Well-trained bodies sliding easily forward and back on track-mounted seats, the powerful pull of their oars precisely coordinated. I don’t remember if Mike’s team won, but I do remember the strength and grace of the sport and the athletes competing - it was mesmerizing.

Fast-forward a few years to my first week at UC Santa Barbara. I happened to see a flier for a meeting about rowing for the crew team and my intrigue was rekindled. That night I sat listening to Doug, the men’s coach, talking to the large audience about how this sport was not for the faint of heart. This was for the person who wasn’t satisfied running behind someone - this was for the person who’d bust a gut to pass anyone in front of them. This was for the person who would give it everything they had to get to the finish line. I was hooked.

There was a lot to learn. For one thing, jump squats hurt. The more we did, the more they hurt. Weight training - squats, deadlifts, lifting to failure -  was a new thing for me. I became familiar with the oar itself, and the set up of the eight-person shell, or boat: rowers, numbered one to eight bow to stern, sit with their backs to the bow, syncing their oar stroke partly off the eight seat (also called stroke) and partly off the small-bodied coxswain (cox) perched in the stern, the only person in the boat facing in the direction the boat moves. The cox was both coach and human metronome, and a key presence inside the boat. Although I rowed two seat, almost as far away from the cox as you could get, I could hear the cox loud and clear via the speaker system along the gunnels or the mini bull-horn they’d sometimes use.  

Afternoons were our dryland training: runs, ergs (timed 2000-meter workouts on an ergometer or rowing machine to measure progress), circuits, and various sadistic workouts our coaches concocted. 

Our mornings were devoted to rowing. Lake Cachuma, a large reservoir nestled in the Santa Ynez Valley in the mountains above Santa Barbara, was a lovely place to start our day. 6:00 am sharp at the boat house, a mere 45-minute carpool-ride from our dorm parking lot. How five of us crammed our long legs into the tiny Honda our teammate Jessica drove I will never know. 

Following practice our Amazonian tribe of women rowers would race back down to campus and hit the dining hall, all of us proudly sporting our old sweats with rings of black oil on the rear-end from the greased seat track. We’d take over a table like it was a medieval dining hall, plates piled high with eggs, pancakes, fruit and yogurt. We were not shy about our appearance or loud conversation or eating our fill. 

Part of racing means reaching for something more. Standard races are 2000 meters - just eight minutes of rowing. But sustaining the required intensity to be first across the finish makes those eight minutes hellish. The coxswains, the good ones, could pull something out of me I didn’t know I had. It was the coxes who were right next to us, straining and sweating and swearing during dryland training, who I wanted coaching me in the heart-bursting intensity of the race. The coxes who slid through training because they “weren’t rowers” were ones I didn’t want to pull an oar for. The coxes who experienced the mental and physical demands of training could use that understanding when lungs, legs, core and arms were screaming for mercy, to stop, or at least for your head to blow up so you wouldn’t register the pain. I’d be ready to pass out and the coxswain’s voice would come through, helping me tap into something a bit deeper inside, and somehow, I’d give it that much more. 

There were other learnings I picked up on my own. In our very first stadium workout, we lined up at the bottom, Coach Deb blew the whistle, and we ran up the first section of stadium seats. The goal was to turn around at the section top and make it back to the bottom starting point with a few seconds to breathe before she blew the whistle again. I simply paced myself and still had breathing time before the next round. I was cruising. 

Then I looked over at Margaret, one of the women in my eight. She was a burly athlete, but not the fleetest of runners. The whistle was going off well before Margaret made it to the bottom. There was no rest for Margaret. She did not give up, she did not complain, she was all in and pushing herself hard, lap after lap. I decided that I needed to up my game. If I was not pushing myself as hard as Margaret, I had no business being in the same stadium as her. Margaret taught me something valuable that day about how pushing yourself looks different for each person. She taught me about humility and respect.  

One morning practice at the end of the season, I was lucky enough to be in an eight with Teresa, a varsity coxswain I hadn’t rowed with before. More than skilled, she was gifted and could elicit great performances from her rowers. There was a fog hanging over the surface of Cachuma and each boat was assigned a specific area of the lake in order to avoid collision. It felt like we were the only humans on the planet out there. As one of our final workout segments, Teresa led us into a demanding sprint, and we were moving strong and fast. And then suddenly, I felt the entire shell lift up out of the water for a couple dozen strokes. We were still rowing hard, but it was effortless. It felt like we were flying. 

​This rare magic is called swing - the result of being well-trained, in sync, working hard as a team, and a little something more that I can’t quite put my finger on.