Written by:
Julia Bloch
Photographer:
Clifton Labrum
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this Issue of Curve:
15#4
“This life is filled with bridges to cross,” Peter says, “many of them guarded by trolls. They’ll determine whether you pass.”
We have just taken a train up the side of a mountain in Teton Village, Wyoming, and the view is breathtaking — all steep slopes and green arrows — but I’m frowning because the train operator chastised me for carrying my coffee on board. I think Peter might have lost his grip on reality while I was getting my latte, but I’m too busy keeping my balance to ask.
“Just remember: Your objective is to cross the bridge. Sometimes the troll wins. Sometimes it loses. And sometimes it’s a draw.”
In the moment, I think he’s crazy, but it really does help. Listening to Peter makes interactions with strangers suddenly feel a little more cartoonlike, and thus more manageable. Which comes in handy while traveling with my family.
Peter and my father are college buddies, and I’ve come along for their 50-year reunion. As I listen to them over gin and tonics, laughing between references to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, I begin to realize that the setting for this foray into my dad’s roots is a little disorienting. Peter and his wife, Ann, moved from Southern California to Jackson Hole a few years ago, and we’re smack in the middle of one of the most affluent communities in the United States. The conversation in the car moves to Kierkegaard as Peter turns into their neighborhood, a gated community — complete with security station and church — at the foot of the Sleeping Indian land formation, so named because the threshold of the mountain resembles a man lying on his side.
I’m visiting from San Francisco, and I know the leather fetishists of my city would have a field day with these road signs. The stop signs say “WHOA!” and the streets bear names such as Tack, Rein, Saddle, Muzzle and Spurs. After we pull into the driveway on Pinto Road, two small dogs snap at our ankles as we carry in our luggage. The lawns are manicured and bright green, an absurdity in this arid environment. The houses are nearly identical; we could be in any American suburb, except for the dogged Western theme that adorns street signs and mailboxes. But Peter and Ann are here for the landscape more than the community. Their ironic demeanor definitely doesn’t fit in with uptight neighbors who, they tell me, have complained about their unruly shrubbery and muddy cars.
Our first morning here, I go for a jog, promising Peter I’ll take it easy in deference to the altitude (over 6,000 feet above sea level). I have a highly refined ability to get lost, so I use the neighborhood as a grid, which isn’t hard. Like most gated communities, the streets are eerily geometric. It’s a cold, foggy morning, but I can still make out the sagebrush that dots the surrounding hills. Maybe it’s the altitude or the size of the sky (this is “big sky country,” after all), but my body feels suspended, almost lighter.
I grow brave and follow a dirt road away from the development to an old barn and some abandoned farm equipment. Checking my watch, I see it’s about time for breakfast so I jog back to the house for a breakfast of warm bagels and coffee.
We spend most of the day downtown, where I wince at the sight of a Gap nestled between arty pottery shops in the old-style shopping district. I need some time to myself, so I tell Peter and my dad that I’m going to wander around for a bit. Downtown Jackson Hole, if touristy, has much to recommend it. The central square is decorated with hundreds of elk antlers, which, according to a sign, are shed each spring and are reputed to carry aphrodisiac properties. Smooth and white, the antlers form intricate, beautiful archways on four corners of the square.
Peter has to work in the morning, so Ann offers to take us to Yellowstone, which I’ve never seen. As we set off against the rose-colored dusk, I read for a while, then just stare out the window at the passing sagebrush and light glancing down on the edges of the mountains until the darkness has fallen completely. I fall hard into bed and sleep heavily until the dawn streams in through the thick curtains of the lodge. When we leave the hotel the next morning, we drive about a quarter of a mile before seeing buffalo roaming around next to some cabins. They’re huge, mangy, just as I’d expected — taller than the people they nonchalantly walk past, with thick patchy fur and huge wet eyes. Their legs are so skinny it’s hard to believe they’re strong enough to support their bodies.
The forest here is still threadbare, thinned and scarred from the fires that raged through this region several summers ago. Patches of new growth shoot up, green and lively, among the charred birch and pine. We pull up beside a black Jeep with a bumper sticker that reads “sierra club sucks” and join a clot of tourists at a set of geysers. The sulfur smell grows stronger when the wind blows the geysers’ steam clouds our way.
I’m fascinated by Yellowstone’s beautiful, deadly, brilliantly colored acidic geysers; even the steam rising off some of them carries shades of orange, blue and green. Many of these geysers erupt, like the famous Old Faithful; others boil and churn continuously due to the pressure in volcanic rock; and still others remain calm and smooth. The pools look a bit like giant slices of agate, rimmed by claylike soil and deposits of silica that form cones and ridges, making the pools resemble giant margarita glasses.
Nearby signs carry stern warnings not to touch the geysers and to stick to the footbridges that skirt the acidic pools; if your shoe were to touch down on the thin crust of soil surrounding the geysers, you might punch through to the burning acid beneath. Occasionally animals will stumble into the pools and be killed almost instantly. Bones are visible at the pools’ edges, a bleak reminder.
We take a small hike around Mammoth Hot Springs, where an almost reverential air surrounds the crowds of people making their way gingerly across thin footbridges. The colors, shapes and overall danger of the landscape make it feel like another planet entirely. I pass an acidic waterfall that looks like ice; the soil is pale clay, the water thick and milky. A butterfly has been trapped on the soil’s surface, and the stream pours down past it, shiny as liquid quartz.
Later in the day we drive up to the massive gift shop that sits behind Old Faithful; according to an enormous clock, it’s set to erupt in about 30 minutes. We take our seats in the bleachers and wait with the huge, eager crowd. About 10 minutes after schedule, the first columns of water shoot up and the crowd exclaims as if we were a rock concert. We all jump to our feet to take in the breadth of the spray. I have to admit it’s a humbling sight as the water reaches heights of up to 180 feet.
Mammoth Hot Springs may be one of the priciest resort areas in the country, but I’ve seen enough grandiose natural features to overcome a good part of the chip on my shoulder. I realize, the way I do every time I travel with him, how alike my father and I are. I’ve been regarding Wyoming with his critical eye. At the airport the next day, Peter takes me aside to tell me how much I am my father’s daughter, and how much they have enjoyed seeing me for this reason. I want to hear more, but they’re calling my flight and the security trolls are glaring at me. I have to keep moving.
As the small plane takes off, I watch the day fade outside my window and remember the wolf. On our way out of Yellowstone, I took a turn driving, and I was the only one who saw it, which for a moment made me wonder if I imagined the whole thing. Ann and my father were deep in conversation about some film, and I saw it by the side of the road, walking calmly against the flow of traffic. It was silver and beautiful and I was so startled by the sight I simply said, under my breath, “Wolf.” There were too many cars close behind for us to slow down, so I was forced to keep driving right past the animal. I had to keep moving. It broke my heart to leave it.
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