Hiking through beauty always helped Astrid better feel the wonder in her adventures. But on this trip, before she even stepped foot on a trail, she could see the wonder–the trees along the winding roads in Grand Teton National Park were ablaze. The Aspen colonies and Cottonwood trees burned brilliant yellow everywhere–be it among millions of their peers or standing solitary along a road.
It was fall in The Tetons.
After an early morning at Schwabacher Landing trailhead, Bjorn and Astrid went back to their Bed and Breakfast for … breakfast. Then off again, down the road, into the Grand TetonNational Park, but not too fast, because wildlife parties.
During their time in Wyoming, Astrid and Bjorn dubbed these traffic jam inducing phenomena, “Bear Party” or “Moose Party” or “Wolf Party.” Because just the existence or visual hint of an animal along the road in the wild, would draw a crowd to one spot, sometimes with cars lined up for miles.
On their way to hike in Cascade Canyon, on the ever-popular Moose-Wilson Road, they encountered a few Bear Parties, and maybe one Moose Ghost Party. Drive-through style.
Most of the time, the hosts of these parties hid so well from Astrid’s eyes and perceptions that she either did not believe they were there, or she started to think they were subjective ghosts–everyone else seemed to see them, or pretended they could see them, but she couldn’t. Subjectively, to her, they were ghosts.
Because it was a beautiful autumn Sunday in the Tetons, they had to park half a mile along the road to the Jenny Lake Visitor’s Center, and Cascade Canyon trailhead. There, for a fee, visitors can take a seasonal water taxi across Jenny Lake and cut two miles from the hike to the best views. The dock to the shuttle was crammed with people and the wait to get on it predicted to stretch into hours, so Astrid and Bjorn chose to spend that time walking the extra two miles around Jenny Lake to the trail to Cascade Canyon.
The Cascade Canyon Trail led them, after a narrow, rocky climb, to Inspiration Point where they ate some lunch. Onward and upward by rocky, dry switchbacks and narrow ledges, they entered Cascade Canyon, a valley on fire with huckleberry bushes dressed in fall red and a thousand different shades of orange, yellow and sometimes green foliage gracing the canyon walls.
… and then back down, with a satisfying ache of accomplishment in Astrid’s legs, and just enough footsore to remind her what she gave to see the blessed views. If she thought about nature’s grandeur, and beheld it for a time, it seemed to ask something of her; sometimes it was effort and discomfort, but it always gave back growth and wonder. She loved long, arduous hikes the best, when she moved slow and steady, for hours, just walking, thinking, looking, touching trees and any branch along the way (but NEVER poison ivy), and maybe jotting down a note or two in her trusty notebook.
Because the two mile hike back around the lake to the visitor center was a bit of a stretch after their eight mile trek, they chose to wait an hour for the Jenny Lake water taxi.
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After dinner that evening, Bjorn stopped at Oxbow Bend pull-off, where Ansel Adams once snapped a famous picture (Ansel Adams, The Tetons and Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, 1942). Astrid stayed in the car again and read, while Bjorn set up a tripod and waited to capture the landscape in “just the right light.”
After some time, Astrid got out and walked along the wall separating the parking lot from the grand vista, finding Bjorn in a gaggle of photographers, all waiting for the light, all instant, temporary friends. Very much like what Astrid dubbed “wildlife parties,” except they were looking for, waiting for beauty on a wider, more ephemeral scale.
“… Do you care about the same truth?’ The man who agrees with us that some question, little regarded by others, is of great importance, can be our Friend. He need not agree with us about the answer.” (The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis, pg. 66. Harcourt, New York.)
As photographers wait for the sky to turn it’s best shades, elbow to elbow, they talk, as if old friends, connected by a shared interest, about what scenes they’ve captured in the past, what they did to get them.
Behind them and far away, rain was coming in a grey-blue cloud, fighting the sun for supremacy, and making a rainbow where they clashed. The storm dressed the wide sky in dramatic blues and greys, with billows of white now and again.
When the rain started to fall, the photographers with their fancy equipment hurried back to their cars. “That guy comes here all the time, sleeps in his truck,” Bjorn said, pointing to a man in a capped, red truck.
Not I 