6:49 AM

Bearing witness to such a spectacle left me with a certain sense of wonderment and even giddiness just for the priveledge to be there.
In the quiet stillness it was easy to feel swallowed by the vastness of it all yet part of everything at the same time.

The ground hugging wind was radiply erasing the footprints in the sand along the dune's crest and reforming a nice crisp edge.
In spite of the wind cleaning up the footprints left from the other earlier photographers ahead of me their impressions in the sand would remain though the best light of the day.
The big dunes beckoned but remained a long ways off while the best dawn light presented itself, so I looked for opportunistic shots along the journey through the dunes instead.
I was taking a shot about every 100 feet or so as I trudged through the sand trying to make the best use of the sun that was emerging above the hills to the right.
The interesting insight is that from the lower parts of the dunes one is able to include the big dunes in a rich context of the greater sand dunes.
Ironically, the view from the top of the biggest dunes does not include the big dunes themselves so something is lost buy going there first.
So in the end being at the lower parts of the dunes presented a richer opportunity to get at the essense of the place.