The price of paradise in Costa Rica

Here's my last story as a staff writer and photographer at the Star Tribune. After 22 years, 50 countries, 45 states and most of the counties in Minnesota, I probably deserved the chance to say so long in a more formal way; but in the January round of buyouts, the managers didn't let reporters say goodbye to the readers. They didn't want any reminders of the paper's ongoing diminishment. No sour grapes though; this story was a fitting send-off. In my career, I was fortunate to have the freedom to write as I saw fit, to cover the dark side of travel as well as its joys. The over-developed, under-policed Costa Rican town of Tamarindo would be an excellent subject for a dissertation on what can go wrong when a tourist town doesn't plan carefully to protect its own soul.

Experiments

Our tiny cabin has taught us to live simply, and made it easier to balance in handstand.

Great Sand Dunes National Park, March 22, 2009.

Sand and light

An assignment to write about the 22 religious communities that have settled in Crestone, Colorado, took me to the San Luis Valley, near the border with New Mexico. The valley is pool-table flat, suspended at 8,000 feet between two 14,000 foot mountain ranges. Rivers and streams carry broken rock and gravel down from the high peaks, and winds from the southwest carry them back toward the Sangre de Cristo mountains. Over thousands of years, this pattern has built an area of sand dunes that covers 30 square miles and is as high as 750 feet. After spending several days visiting temples, we spent a day at the dunes. Even in a howling windstorm, it was spectrally beautiful. As the sun pushes shadows across the sand, shifts in light and dark create a dynamic flow. The streams and fuzziness along the sharp seams in this photo are grains of sand, carried into flight by the wind.