“The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.”-Rainer Maria Rilke, Wendung (Turning Point), Poem
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Because they had moved their household north into Michigan a few months before, Astrid and Bjorn flew out of a smaller airport, then changed flights in Chicago to get to their destination.
As always, Astrid was flustered and anxious about going through airport security, baggage checks, and the tense hassle of airplane boarding, but since her first flight at 22, she had slowly grown accustomed to being in airports; accustomed to the sitting, waiting, and using airports. So, she thought she knew what to expect when they landed in Wyoming.
She was pleasantly surprised.
Because she hadn’t looked out the windows when the plane landed, she was a little confused when the pilot announced, “Please don’t stop on the tarmac to take pictures.”
When Astrid got to the front door of the plane, she finally understood. She held onto the railings as she went down the movable stairs onto a paved, open-air tarmac, because she couldn’t help but look around; they had landed at the feet of the Grand Teton Mountains, with the snow-topped peaks on one side, a seemingly endless plain on the other.
The one-story Jackson, Wyoming (WY) airport had only one restaurant and two small gift shops, but they did have rental cars counters and the very important bear-spray rental kiosk**. So while Astrid watched to pickup her checked luggage, Bjorn inquired about renting two canisters of bear spray. [It is recommended that each person have their own when hiking in the area, of course.]
As they drove through the small town of Jackson Hole, WY, Astrid felt like she had been there before: the vibe felt a lot like the tourist-y towns of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, Mackinac Island, Michigan, and Estes Park, Colorado, but with a sassy, drunk cowgirl kind of vibe and a lot of antler art. After checking into The Sassy Moose Bed and Breakfast, then drove off to get water and food at the grocery store, then to their first beauty spot in Grand Teton National Park.
The Mormon Row Barns
“These are the most photographed barns in the country,” Bjorn said as they strolled along the road with a few other tourists. While he scoped for good photography spots, Astrid had rearranged luggage and ate her salad, then joined him, along with a half dozen others people to stare at old barns on a backdrop of mountains.
It was there that Astrid decided to try to photograph very popular things, in unpopular ways. Many people–whether they know what they’re looking at or not–have seen a picture of the Grand Tetons bathed in morning light reflected on water. But they probably haven’t seen the trailhead parking lot to the spot, or the crowds of people who spend all of five minutes looking at them.
As they strolled around the barns, Astrid tried to find unique photographic angles, which involved artfully excluding tourists from the pictures.
The Mountains’ Mirror at Schwabacher Landing
Schwabacher Landing is famous, as one might guess if you searched for an image under the name, because the mountains are so often reflected perfectly in the Snake River below it. It’s a good place to see a majestic mountain range reflected on water. And a good place to watch people.
In the dying twilight, Bjorn steered their rental SUV down the rutted dirt road to Schwabacher Landing Trailhead, wanting to stake out photographic perspectives, and maybe catch some sunset pictures. Astrid stayed in the car and watched as darkness slowly moved in around her.
The stars are beautiful, I am exhausted. Night darkened the sky, the moon and stars came out and made a jagged dark horizon underneath. Night is so often a stressful time for me. I never know if I’ll sleep or not, and right now I am exhausted. To my mind, it’s 10:37pm. To my watch, it is only 8:37pm
As she was rearranging luggage again, three young men, returning to their vehicle in the dark, with friction and frustration tuning their voices, asked Astrid, “We had some beer cooling in the stream down there, did you see anyone come up here with any? Did you see who took it?”
No. No she didn’t.
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We’re driving through a valley where nature paints the horizon in broad strokes, leaving jagged edges in the sky, under long swaths of blue. I wish I had brought more warm base layers.
The next morning, before breakfast, Bjorn and Astrid snuck out of their AirBnB to catch the sunrise at Schwabacher Landing, along with hundreds of other tourists. The parking lot was full when they pulled in, so they parked alongside the road.
And again, Astrid, to Bjorn’s disappointment, didn’t get out of the car. She knew she was being ridiculous, but was a little tired and ill, so she sat huddled in blankets as she wrote and watched people.
During her morning meditations in the parking lot she watched tourists come and go. She watched some speed-walk, some sluggish and slow, on their way to see, with their own eyes, A Famous Picture: the wondrous spectacle that is a sunrise against a mountain.
There were tourists in pajamas under their winter coats, a few in Cowgirl “chic,”–complete with stiff, new cowboy boots, white skirts, and cowboy hat, carrying shopping bags–groggy tourists with coffee, single watchers hurrying with big cameras …
If it were warmer out, Astrid would have sat outside, but it was cold to her, and it felt overly touristy, Disney World-ish. Memory whispered, reminding her that “backcountry camping either traumatizes you or spoils you to any other outside natural experience.” She was with a couple hundred other people at one of the park’s best beauty spots, after sleeping in a real bed, with a bathroom with indoor plumbing and wi-fi, but part of her longed for the chilly tent, the warm sleeping bag, the blessed loneliness and a little fear, the cold morning trudge to a secluded tree…
Before Astrid could walk back very far into her memory, the tourists started to return to their cars. Tough crowd. Did they “see” the sunrise? Or did they take a picture, post it online, and felt that was enough? Maybe they will scroll past it someday in the future while looking to see how many “likes” it got? Are they trying to beat the crowd to the next sight the sun will bless with its gold? A long bath in a beautiful space was not on their agenda, obviously. As they pass, they look at Astrid, as if wondering why she hadn’t joined the throng.
It felt wrong. It felt wrong to sit in the parking lot while glory illuminated grandeur a short walk away, but it felt just as wrong to spend twenty seconds snapping a picture, be “wowed” for the next twenty seconds, then run off to the next thing.
How does one properly offer tribute and honor to a glorious natural sight? A long hike? Forest bathing? A picnic?
Astrid and Bjorn were one of the last cars in the parking lot, but as they started their long crawl back the dirt lane, they better understood: there were cars lining the road for nearly a mile, making two-way traffic impossible in most spots.
As so often happens when Astrid is trying to understand her reactions post-adventure, this quote from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins made an impact on her thoughts:
“The grandest mountain prospect that the eye can range over is appointed to annihilation. The smallest human interest that the pure heart can feel is appointed to immortality”
In other words, the mental impact of the “grandest mountain prospect” tends to fade in our memory (even when we have pictures), but we remember forever “the smallest human interest”– the people who were with us on the adventure to beautiful places. To these seemingly fickle tourists, maybe who they were with was more important and held more value than what they were seeing.
What They Were Looking At: Grand Teton Mountains
The Teton Mountain Range is the youngest mountain range in the Rocky Mountains. They are pointy, snowy, with abrupt elevation changes and the “dramatic” Snake River at the bottom, named because, it snakes. Grand Teton is the highest mountain in the range, at 13,775’. This mountain range has about a dozen glaciers hiding in its slopes.
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**In the past, visitors to the area intent on hiking into the Wyoming wilderness would buy bear spray on their arrival to the area, then throw it away before their departing flight (‘cause you can’t take bear spray on airplanes). To avoid so much waste, and create a little business, someone decided to start renting the canisters to tourists, hence, “Bear Spray Rental” is a thing in the Jackson, Wyoming airport.
But why? Bear Spray is a pepper spray, but with a lower concentration of irritant than used in People-Deterrent Spray. It will stop/repel other large, threatening wildlife, too, if, on the unfortunate chance you have angered or attracted them, and you don’t want to become a statistic.
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Not I 