R and J in the USA

At Bruneau Dunes State Park we had set our sights on hitting the dunes by 5:00 PM, giving us both plenty of time to work on the various projects we were both wildly behind in, and constantly attempting to catch up on, and also late enough in the day to avoid any burning sand on our feet. We weren’t sure if those sand heat warnings applied this late in the season, but we also weren’t trying to find out the hard way. 

The dunes were tall for dunes, but not so tall that we didn’t think two hours was plenty of time to go up, hang out at the top, and then come down. In addition to the warning signs of sand temperature, we had also seen warning signs about orientation and wildlife. There were plenty of signs that made it clear it was possible to get lost, dehydrated, and disoriented out in the dunes, so proper care would be necessary.

We packed up our hiking packs for all of the just in cases, complete with our Garmin GPS that has the ability to track us, send an SOS if we need help, and help us backtrack to our origin point – all in one little device. We also packed a good old fashioned hand held compass for when batteries die. We packed up our water, food, and Mylar blankets for the worst case scenarios. And our multi-tools. There was plenty of wildlife in the area, but as far as we understood, it all waited for dusk to wake up and take over the landscape. We planned to be back before then.

Ryan was “as giddy as a schoolboy” (10,000 points to anyone that gets the movie quote – the points can be exchanged for respect or, well, nothing else really) getting ready to ascend the dune.

Of course, as we entered the trail, we had our quick conversation to see if we agreed that what we were doing counted as a hike. We were both immediately on board with it. It checked almost every box on the list and was an easy yes.

Then we started hiking. 

Walking in sand is work. Even flat sand. Once that sand has an incline, Julie found out quicker than Ryan that it is HARD! Julie was huffing and puffing. Ryan was doing neither. When it comes to 5Ks, Ryan now had Julie consistently beat. But when hiking, it was usually Julie that was setting the pace with Ryan trying to keep up. Well, apparently not when there is sand involved. 

We marveled at the cool shapes of the sand, looking like water waves frozen in space on the surface of the dune. Various humps and ridges formed in different places depending on how the wind flowed in that particular spot. 

It was a marvelous sight and even more remarkable to see the process of how this huge dune had been built by the wind blowing each individual sand grain into place, and that process happening with total constancy.

There had been a sign at the trailhead describing the history and geology of the area and the dunes. The sign explained that there are winds in the area that blow in one prevailing direction 20% of the time and blow in the exact opposite direction another some 20% of the time, which is what has kept the dunes basically in the same shape and place for thousands of years. 

Pretty cool stuff.

We kept climbing the solid but soft ground below us, sliding down a bit with every step.

Eventually we came to a crossroads and had to decide which dune to scale. Ryan determined that the tallest one was the one to our right, and so we went.

Julie had noticed, oddly, that she had started to feel nervous halfway through, but saw nothing to be nervous about and simply carried on.

We made the sharp turn towards the ridge at the top of the dune. The razor’s edge at the very top got thinner and thinner until you could see its tip waving in the wind, made up of individual grains of sand that hung for a moment until the wind swept it away. Then we got a view into the massive bowl on the other side of the dune crest.

If either of us stumbled down this other side, it would be a steep fall to a very soft landing, but also a brutal hike back up the steep, sandy incline, or a much longer hike around the base of the dune, way too long to make it back by dusk.

No problem, though. It was easy enough to stay on this side of the rim.

Ryan was charging ahead along the rim to its highest point. It would be easy to observe for any onlooker that Ryan was blissing his face off. He was basking in the beauty of the vast expanse visible from this vantage point.

Julie was having a different experience. Well, partially. She was 50% in awe of the beauty and the view and loving every second of it. 

The other 50% seemed to be going in a different direction, one that Julie did not see coming and could not seem to influence. It had been a long time since Julie had felt this particular sensation. Well, actually not that long, now that she thought of it. It was that same sense of paralysis she got at the top of the jumping board at the Wyoming hot springs, but times a million.

This particular degree of paralysis is something she thought was long in the past. She hadn’t felt it since she faced down her paralyzing fear of swimming years ago. It felt oddly similar. Well, actually exactly the same as what she used to feel sometimes in the water. But there was no water around, and she didn’t have any awareness of any particular dune-related trauma to overcome. She wondered what the heck was going on.

When she used to be afraid of swimming, the strangest and most overpowering sensation would come over her where she just couldn’t move her body, no matter how much she wanted to or tried. It seemed so irrational at times. She understood her fear when out in the middle of a huge lake, but sometimes the paralysis would happen just getting herself to swim ten feet from a dock. It just didn’t make any sense to her, at least not on the surface. 

Here on the dunes, she didn’t actively feel afraid of anything. She had no sensation or thought that was fearful. But her body was telling a different story. With swimming, after years of diving into it, literally and figuratively, she had gotten to the bottom of it and freed herself to LOVE swimming. So, what in the heck was this familiar and long-passed sensation doing finding her on top of a sand dune!?

While all this was going on for Julie, she looked over at Ryan as he was peacefully enjoying the scenery in a total revelry.  Though she tried, she just couldn’t move her limbs to get to him. He was only twenty yards away. In retropsect, Julie wished she had just stayed silently in that spot while she attempted to get to the bottom of this surprise rush of fear. But she wanted so much to push past it and just get to the top of the dune.

“Come on!” Julie thought. “Just walk a few steps more!”

Then came the part that really embarrassed Julie. Now she was freaking out that she couldn’t get herself to move. That was fine, but now she realized she was intruding on Ryan’s happy place. It was hard for him not to notice his wife cowering in the sand and for that not to disturb his revelry at least a little. 

Now THAT sucked. Julie felt terrible.

Ryan was chill and kind, as always.

”It’s okay, Baby. You can do it”

Julie was looking around and had no idea why this was happening. There was nothing to be afraid of. Yes, we were up high and steep. But any fall would be a soft one, a fun one. This was definitely falling into some deep subconscious bucket.

”Try singing one of your songs from your musical.” Ryan encouraged.

Julie tried. It was a good idea. 

Nope. Whatever deep subconscious fear was controlling Julie from within was not so easily distracted nor fooled.

What a nice guy, though. Julie would not have judged him if he had yelled, “Dude. What the heck is your problem? Get your ass over here!” But he was sweet and kind. Julie felt like such an ass for disturbing his day. This is the one thing he wanted from this day – to sit on top of the tallest dune. Friggin’ marriage. “Well,” Julie thought. “I guess this is the for better or for worse part. At least he got a few minutes of peace before I ruined it.” 

Every time she tried to move, no dice.

Eventually, Julie remembered how she had gotten past her final swimming fear. For those of you that don’t know, Julie developed a terrible fear of swimming when she had asthma as a child. She didn’t even remember it was there until her mid-30’s, when she wanted to try triathlon and realized, “Oh yeah. I’m terrified of swimming and can’t do it.” Julie doesn’t like to be scared of things and CERTAINLY doesn’t like to be limited from doing something just because of fear. So, she had dedicated five years of her life to overcoming her fear of swimming until she could complete a full 2.4 mile swim in an Ironman, and a 5K swim in Lake George for extra measure. In the process, she had found about 50 different layers of fear all wrapped up in the act of swimming, many of which had nothing to do with the activity of swimming itself. It had just stored itself there.

She whittled through each layer until two years prior to the Ironman, when she faced the final remaining fear, the one that came up when she was in deep water by herself. That was the one she remembered giving her this same gripping feeling of paralysis. She remembered how she got over it and freed herself to swim across deep waters. It was fairly simple. When in a circumstance that feels scary for whatever reason, her old habit was to go gung ho forward with full ambition and not let herself pay attention to the annoying and inconvenient emotion getting in the way of going for something. The solution was to try and notice if she felt afraid and just slow down and give herself time to acclimate to a new setting until she could develop the real rooted confidence to move forward. Not just the confidence associated with blind ambition and enthusiasm that Julie is prone to. Just a little time to get used to something.

Julie was damn sure she was not going to climb this dune and get twenty yards from the highest point and not reach it. So, she took a deep breath and let herself feel afraid – even though she still didn’t see what there was to be afraid of – and just let herself get acclimated to the new terrain on a slower timeline, letting go of the drive to force herself over whatever it was. Then her insides would settle down and she would be able to climb five more feet forward. Then another surge. Then another stop to get acclimated.

Annoying and slow, but effective. She continued on.

She was embarrassed and felt bad to have tainted this beautiful and lovely experience for Ryan, but Ryan took it all in stride. Eventually he came back towards Julie and we sat together at the top of the mountain with the wind whipping sand in our faces. It was getting in Julie’s mouth and eyes. Ryan seemed to be a creature of the desert and was completely one with the sand, unmolested by it. 

Julie said, “I just have to reach the top. I can’t come this far and not reach it.” 

At this point, with time wearing thin, Julie stopped taking her time and just physically forced herself to do it despite the protests her body kept giving. She reached the top and then everything relaxed. She was just there having as much fun as Ryan had been. Whatever was gripping her had apparently tired of the moment and disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived. 

Later in the evening, when Julie reflected on it all, she began to understand exactly what had been going on in her deeper mind and had hopes that this sudden resurgence of what seemed like such an old feeling was actually a purging of old debris and remnants. While she had many revelations, one was the thing that she was most aware she was afraid of. Julie is not so much afraid of dying, but of dying for being an idiot. THAT is what scares Julie. As described in other posts, Julie knows human beings have a tendency towards stupidity, and Julie has that tendency more than most.

The idea of being the subject in another one of those articles where you feel bad for the pain and suffering of the people involved, but have trouble feeling totally bad because, let’s be honest, that person was an idiot and brought their terrible misfortune upon themselves, the idea of being that person – to the depths of her soul, Julie was just not willing to go out like that. And so, any new setting in which the likelihood of idiocy increases, Julie’s body has a tendency to say, “Sorry kid, you have to be over five feet to get on this ride.”

There was that article about that guy Julie had read about years ago who tragically died on July 4th. It was tragic, and Julie felt deeply for him and his friends and his family. But the REASON he died is that he thought it would be fun to set fireworks off from the top of his own head. And he did it. He put the fireworks on top of his own head and then lit the fuse. And, wouldn’t you know it, it didn’t turn out so well. Or the person that tragically disintegrated in a Yellowstone National Park steaming cauldron because he wanted to test it to see if it would be a good place to take a thermal bath. It’s truly, truly awful, but oh so avoidable. And Julie was apparently, on a cellular level, dead set on avoiding such a fate.

And why does it come from this deep body paralysis? Julie realized that her lizard brain was aware that, while Julie could use her thinking brain to avoid a lot of that obvious tendency towards idiocy, like the feeling that surges when Julie looks at a campfire and finds it so beautiful that she finds some primal desire to be inside of it – that kind of stupidity is easy enough to use her brain to shut down. No. Even Tarzan know. Fire hot. No step in fire. Fine. But, most of Julie’s experience of human stupidity, including her own, rises up suddenly, sincerely and catches the thinking brain by surprise. Like the time Julie almost died after enthusiastically eating a heaping tablespoon of delicious looking homemade hummus, only to find out, once most of her breathing passages were about 92% blocked that the hummus that had smelled like peanut butter as it passed under nose into her mouth by her own hand, that that hummus was, in fact, home-made peanut butter. After 4.5 decades on the planet and witnessing her own and other human stupidity with such remarkable consistency, something deep inside of her has set the bar very high for proving to herself that she was equipped to navigate a new environment. And apparently these sand dunes were counting, to her amygdala as sufficiently uncharted territory to be characterized as dangerous, even though she was pretty confident that all was quite good.

And, as for not wanting to die of the disease of human stupidity, it’s not the ego of it or the wounded pride that she was wanting to avoid, as Julie has very little pride, dignity or shame about her own moronocism (whether or not its a word, it’s the perfect word). She knew if her own stupidity killed her, she wouldn’t have to be there to feel like the ass she was anyways – but the idea that she could waste her own life and rob her loved ones of someone they cared about for no damn good reason, that was just not an acceptable fate for Julie – so, this fear/paralysis mechanism had apparently developed, a deep suspicion of herself lest the combination of her ravenous enthusiasm for life and experience combined with her unfortunate tendency towards random bursts of idiocy were to tragically unite in unexpected moments.

So, the idea of going into a landscape that is unknown to her and the possibility that she was putting herself and Ryan into some kind of danger that neither of them knew enough about to know they weren’t prepared to face thanks to her unbridled ambition and enthusiasm was causing her limbic system to go, “All right Peppy McGee, slow your ass down.” The more unknown the territory, the more it seemed to her subconscious that the scenario was ripe with opportunities for idiocy. Okay, at least that’s not entirely irrational and silly. But, Julie thought, let’s try to keep those assessments conscious next time and not go into a full body paralysis that helps no one. So, Julie was glad for the new insight and personal growth. Thanks Bruneau Dunes.

Well, back to the top of the dune.

It was beautiful and we (especially once Julie’s lizard brain mutiny had passed) didn’t want to leave the top of the dunes. But, we could see that we had only barely the time to get down the dunes before dusk. 

Ryan turned to Julie with a glint in his eye.

”Wanna slide down?”

”Heck yea!” Julie responded.

We both let go of our feet that we had been digging into the soft ground to counter the pull of gravity. And…aaaand….and nothing. Gravity had nothing to say about the situation. We remained stationary on the top of the dune.

Eventually, we realized, to “slide” down the hill without one of those fancy sand boards would require a little locomotive assistance. Julie used one of her legs to scooch herself down, Ryan slid down like an upside down inchworm.

Not as fun as we remember sledding down snow-covered hills as a kid, but, a close second. 

We were at the bottom of the massive dune in seconds.

We both wanted to go again! We turned to try to scale the dune once more and then looked at each other and realized, “Oh, right, that’s hard.” To scale it would have been even harder than our original approach which was up a much more gradual path. We had neither the time nor the energy to get postured for another ride downhill and we began our descent towards home where our van sat at the trailhead probably no more than half a mile down the trail.

The sun was still up, but it was starting to whisper signs of dusk coming around the corner.

Then we heard them from behind the brush and sandy bushes.

”Yip, yip, yip!”

Those barking dog voices were coming from no more than 30 feet to the left of the trail.

”Yip, yip, yip!” Came the response of another pack of wild dogs to the right of the trail, just as close, but also not visible to us.

Neither of us speak coyote, but we were guessing the translation was something like,

”You guys smell those morons on the trail at dusk?”

”Yea. You took the ones last night, we get these guys.”

What’s funny is, in this situation that had actual real danger, Julie had no fear, no paralysis, no panic instinct, not even a slight twinge of nervousness – alertness, yes – awareness that there was a new set of possible outcomes for the evening, definitely. But more just the excitement of a new adventure with an immediate acceptance of what elements of our fate were now out of our control and a recognition that we simply needed to respond to our situation as intelligently as possible. Now the absence of fear in this situation – THAT is irrational. Ryan wasn’t cowering afraid, but, his head was definitely on a swivel as we proceeded down the trail now aware we were on their turf.

”Do you know what the safety protocol is for coyotes?” Julie asked Ryan.

”Nope.”

We had just spent the last few weeks learning about how to handle bears and moose – how to avoid them, what safety precautions to take, what protective things to carry with you and what to do if the worst case scenario happens. We didn’t know if it was all the same for coyotes. With some animals you are supposed to be loud so they know to avoid you, but use a soft voice when you see them. Some you are supposed to make loud noises when you see them. 

We had decent reception, Julie pulled out her phone and looked up, “what to do around coyotes”. Ah, the internet. 

We pulled out our two multi-tools and got the knives ready, just in case the worst case scenario of being in a dog fight happened, not that either of us thought we’d stand a chance against a pack of coyotes, but it felt less dumb then not having them out.

Master google told us to make noise and, if we saw the coyotes to throw things at them, not directly at them, but in their direction. 

Ryan started talking loudly and Julie turned Pandora Music on on her phone and turned up the volume.

It was probably a hilarious sight. 

But the best part was the song that came on, blaring into the desert around us.

Sting sang his heart out.

”Don’t stand, don’t stand, don’t stand so close to me!”

”You hear that coyotes,” we shouted with a giggle “follow Sting’s orders. The police are here and you best back off!”

Julie had just finished reading a book written by a National Park Ranger about the insanity of life in the National Park Service and how many tourists took warning signs lightly and then were found as corpses the next day by the unfortunate rangers whose job it had been to attempt to protect them from nature and from themselves. So, while we giggled at the absurdity of our situation, we also took it plenty seriously until we knew we were safe.

We heard a few more yips and made our way calm and steady towards the parking lot where the van was waiting for us. By the time we reached the end of the trail, the Beatles were escorting us down our Long and Winding Road. We made it to the van with the sun still peaking over the horizon and we were ready to head back to the campground grateful for an evening filled with beauty, adventure, discovery and the raw experience of sand in our faces and nature’s raw life and beauty etched in our minds.