Living On Teton Time

September 2006

I haven’t been gone from Sonoma a week and already I’m in a different world.
I’m working the tail-end of the season at my old job at Grand Teton National Park’s Jackson Lake Lodge, a place where cell phones barely work and few people seem to care. There’s so much to write about — details, like unlocked bicycles and unlocked doors. They’re everywhere.
It snowed the other day — big, puffy flakes, coming down for about an hour. I’m not sure how the hotel guests felt about it, but I know my co-workers were excited. Many are university students from Turkey and Bulgaria, and they snapped photos from the restaurant’s back door. A similar sense of excitement happened later in the evening, when a large bull moose ambled along the patio outside the Mural Room — a flurry of employees descended on the windows, vying for the best viewing alongside the guests. The managers, rather than telling their minions to get back to work, encouraged workers to stop what they were doing and take in the sight.
Heavy and wet that night, the snow was gone from the valley floor the following morning. I had the day off, so I ventured into the mountains, up a lonely trail called Hanging Canyon. The trail is lonely because it doesn’t exist on most maps of the Tetons, but it was made lonelier still because of the lateness in the season and the cloudy, cold weather.
And because of the snow. At the lower elevations there was none, but once I climbed a thousand or so feet above the valley floor, it was everywhere. For the first time in years I was wearing my heavy leather hiking boots, sporting my trekking pole, my instep crampons, my ice axe. The snow was too soft and shallow for the ice axe to be of much use, but I felt proud with it strapped to my pack. Just as some affect a cane or a pipe, I felt my ice axe presented me with an air of importance — or perhaps just silliness, to those who know better. Either way, I liked it.
I had hiked this trail many times. It was never easy to follow, winding over boulders with small rock cairns marking the way, and it was made even harder with six inches of snow obscuring the route. No footprints marked the trail, unless you count those of the elk.
But really, the trail didn’t need much marking — just head straight up, 3000 feet in three miles. The occasional slipping was made worse by the snow-covered gaps between boulders, and the weather was cloudy and damp. I should have dressed warmer. I was still used to Sonoma; I hadn’t anticipated pulling out longjohns this early in the year. I considered turning back, but… no. This was my first hike back in the Tetons. This was my home, or at least one of my homes. I was determined to go on.
After much trudging and slipping, I reached Ramshead Lake. I had hoped to make it to Lake of the Crags, only a hundred or so vertical feet higher, but a large boulder field stood in the way. With the soft snow covering the gaps between the rocks, I knew it was a sprained ankle waiting to happen. And then what? I was alone. Really alone. I realized I hand’t been this alone in years. Alone, in the cold and snow, with darkness approaching… it was exhilirating. There is a certain feeling you get when you realize your life is fragile, but you continue to live: Relief? Emancipation? Accomplishment? Luck?
Something. Perhaps it’s just the feeling of something that cannot be bought from a store with a credit card and plugged in. For me, it’s a sense of returning home.