This is for Ronovanwrites weekly haiku challenge #70, with prompt words crane and gold.

quick look gleaning fields
sandhill cranes glean gold near Sand
Dunes National Park

I lived in Alamosa, Colorado for three years, at 7500 feet in the San Luis Valley, land of cool sunshine. The sandhill cranes would migrate through and glean the potato fields, flocks with thousands. There were more cranes than people at the height of migration. And in the northeastern corner of the Valley, surrounded by the Sangro de Cristo Mountains and the San Juans, is the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, with dunes up to 600 feet high. We were surrounded at 7500 feet by 14,000 foot peaks and passes out the Valley in all four directions. It is an amazing place.

I took the photo in 2007 at the dunes: I chose this one to try to give an idea of the scale…..we had just climbed up to the top of the first dunes….