I’m sitting in Sarah Sanders’ new home. A pine cabin at the foot of the Grand Teton (the biggest one for you folks that just don’t know). It is fairly late. Sarah is asleep in her new bed, awaiting her new life and dreaming of god knows what. I cannot sleep, but my brain as active as it may be is swirling rapidly in a formation that makes no sense. I’ve had little peace this entire trip. It has been enthralling, enrapturing, and overpowering. The only sense of sincere warmth and comfort I felt was that when I was laying next to my boyfriend, listening to him drifting into sleep, letting his slowed movements of rising and falling slumber take me with him into my own quiet and soft ethereal world. I woke to snow that morning, and he had left me…and the snow perhaps would have held more peace had he been with me, enjoying the delicate coat of purity spread on top of the already pristine beauty.
I should be relaxed. I should feel the exhaustion of road weariness taking me to my own temporary bed. But my brain refuses to stop, no matter how much my body aches. This place, this section of the country demands too much. It is not quaint, or subtle, it is a force to be reckoned with. I left my comfort to battle what I have tried to understand for the past ten years.
I first came to this part of the country when I turned 21. I was somewhat adopted into a family in my late teens and they graciously and kindly brought me with them on a family vacation. I had never in my life experienced something of such magnitude (in the sense of nature). I am a born and bred Philadelphian, a city dweller. I know the streets and the subways and the buildings and the pavement. I can identify architectural periods in time more that the very tiny varying types of trees that humbly remain in the streets of my city. I know the rugged, the raw, and the unending fueling grueling primer that coats the industry of metropolis survival. I know the quick, the non-stop, the unending, and the not enough time for anything. The Ihavetogoandgetthisdonetodayandkeepdoingitandwakeuptomorrowanddoitagain.
When I saw these mountains for the first time I was filled with a feeling I did not know how to comprehend. It hurt. It was intense. I was silenced. I was humbled. I felt unreal. I felt scared. I wanted to know everything. How this happened. How it was kept from me. How I have NEVER EVER seen such a fucking magnificent easy, non- man made beauty. I fell in love. I was overcome with infatuation. I was somewhere gone. I heard things roaming around in my brain and heart I’d never heard. I couldn’t function. I needed to feel it. Properly. It was too much. That was just the mountains. The snake river, the rushing saddlebacks in the rock, the canyons, winding and pulling, the trees, whispering and pulling me in, holding me, giving me everything I might have always wanted. The creaking, god, the damn creaking of old lodge poles, swaying and telling their last epic tale before crashing to the forest floor to become meat for the earth to regenerate. All of these things I did not understand. I just FELT them. I felt them too much. We spent a week here and a week in Yellowstone. The gloriousness I felt here was wondrous. And it changed my life a great deal. From that week on I would day dream, and be drawn to and long for, this place. The smell of the fields of sage after a mid afternoon storm would haunt me for years. I am a slow learner. It took me awhile to get back here initially. Lots of city living. Boston, Philly, New York. But this sector danced in my head always. I was always in love. And I always longed for it. I just didn’t know how.
I come from a fairly poor background. I have never in my life had much. I have not been spoiled. Compared to a lot of folks I know….I grew up poor blue-collar working class. We did not venture to national parks, and only because I was a geography nerd did I know what national parks even were. My options to explore these places were non-existent. I read some naturalist writings in my gifted English class and knew I loved being in the woods and in the creek…and that was that. The ocean, since I grew up so close, was my only sense of the mighty power of the nature. And that cannot sincerely count, because my family visited highly developed, commercial beaches that contained amusements, and really and fairly, were cities on the ocean. I did not camp until I was 24 years old. I am almost positive that when I hiked a real hike for the first time in my life at the age of 21, I was wearing skateboarding shoes that were wholly inappropriate for the unforgiving terrain I was about to encounter. I only know, that my confusion regarding the nature seemed to burn in me, and it basically fucked my entire reality up…beginning with the first time I set foot in this park, next to these mountains. The Grand Tetons. It all started here.
I was introduced to hiking in the most brutal of ways. And I cried the first time I tried to hike into the mountains. I was scared to death of wildlife and was convinced that the bear, the moose and the elk were all out to get me. My body didn’t seem to want to endure the pain of elevation gain. The trail was mean. And it made me feel bad about myself. And somewhere in there, while I was left alone to listen to my surroundings, I calmed down. And I listened. I just listened. And something pushed me to move. Something made me push my fat, overweight, out of shape body to go. Up. I moved hard and fast as I could. And that was my first conversation with the nature. I was bitch –slapped. And I didn’t fight back or give up. I just listened. I kept listening over the next two weeks and I was addicted, clocking our mileage, writing down every mountain range, stream, lake, river, forest, type of tree, wildlife we’d encountered, trail, crossing of the continental divide, geologic and geothermal feature, native and non native fish….god. I became obsessed. I loved it all. I wanted it all. I felt like I could hear my freaking brain for a change. I quit smoking. I felt alive. Things made sense. I had all of the clarity and space in the goddamned world.
When we flew back into Baltimore and had to make the drive to Philadelphia I was heartbroken. I was destroyed. I cried. I hated it. The air was shit. The people were shit. The city freaked me the fuck out. Too much. Too soon. Unnecessarily. Gross gross gross. Industry. No nature. Just highway and pavement and poverty smashing against wealth. Nonsensical existence. Man…I lost my shit.
But like any other good American, I just kept myself occupied and kept myself busy and focused on my own idiotic purpose of life. And I shot photographs, and slept with my boyfriend and got caught up in the drama that was my own individual life…and I moved from city to city. And I fell in and out of love. And I struggled as an artist and made monumental friends and had monumental experiences and blah blah blah. And I became a horrible alcoholic. I drank the days away. I drank the nights to challenge the mornings. I slept rarely. I was insatiable but had the best and worst time ever. Growing pains maybe, existential crisis maybe. Weakness, for sure. Yet I had accomplished more by most standards that year than I had in a while. I was selling my photographs frequently. I had received a grant to document something I was interested in. I was living between three cities for the most part, felt enlightened by the immense beauty of people, had a multitude of interesting intimate relationships, was somehow in the middle of all things popular and “cool”, was making more “work’ than I’ve ever made. And still, I longed for something else. I felt it when I rode the subway. I felt it walking the streets from city to city. I felt it while being embraced. I just felt like I wanted to go “home”. I was bored. As I mentioned, I am a slow learner. It took me a good three years to figure out that I just wanted to come back…Here. And every time I come back it is never the same. But the reminder is there. Is here. Those jagged snow covered mountains; they’re telling me something. They’re telling me everything. And I’m older now. I can listen better without my own stupid inflections getting in the way. I could be sleeping peacefully next to the one who loves me the most. And I want that so bad. But I am drawn here. Because here is the next step to there. And man, if I could tell you about the first time I went there. Well, it made here look like a tiny hill. A rolling hill with some trees. I guess the point of all of this is that I am here. And I need to be here. So I can let there go and so I can stop romanticizing these places that draw me in far too much. Maybe so I can listen properly. Like an adult. Not like some wide-eyed child. I’d like to understand correctly, the draw. I’d like to not make up my own words. I’d like to be able to sit and appreciate it all and not be knocked into stupidity. I’d like to get on with my life thank you very much. So please Tetons, and Absorokas and Wyoming and Montana, please…get on with it.
The cabin is creaking. It’s hard not to believe that I’ve been listening to a tale unfolding over these ten years. I can hear the wind in the trees. The mountains are glistening, blue, in the night. Millions of stars are fighting to live up there in the sky. I see the silhouette of the jagged jacked jaw line of those peaks. I’m going to smoke a smoke and drink a beer and listen till I get good and cold. And goddamn…I hope I get to sleep. I’m in the middle of this crazy journey. I wonder what the next leg will bring. Imma be quiet and see what develops. I’ll let you know.
-kg
