Medano Creek Youth T-Shirt

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When you walk on shallow Medano Creek at the base of the Great Sand Dunes, you are walking on water that extends deep below the surface. The dunes sit on top of an aquifer that extends up to a mile below the valley floor. Streams flow on top of the high water table, and most local wetlands are actually the visible top of the aquifer, where it fills in the lowest depressions in the dunes and valley floor.

Instead of flowing into rivers that eventually reach the ocean, streams flow on the valley surface eventually sinking down through the sandy soil primarily into the unconfined aquifer. Because of these "disappearing" streams, and long underground faults around the aquifer, water in the northern half of the San Luis Valley is trapped into a closed basin. The sand dunes rise at the eastern edge of the basin, at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

The flowing arms of Medano Creek on the east and south sides of the dunes, and Sand Creek on the north are the arteri...

Photography is all about using light to capture the emotion and beauty of a fleeting moment. For me, this adventure began with a single spring image using a small Kodak film camera of a freshly watered central Kansas ditch and has come full circle using modern digital techniques. My first camera was acquired by trading an ancient Royal typewriter to a fellow college student who was desperate to finish a term paper. It was a long time ago and that camera was my passport to an art that has fascinated me ever since. I owned and operated a professional studio in central Kansas for 20 years and moved to Colorado in 1994. Part of the studio's early success came from creating outdoor portraiture using controlled lighting...