Out West
As I write this, I am sitting at the picnic table of our Grand Teton campsite, stars beginning to pop out above me, trees veiling the clearing that holds our tent, this picnic table and our car/home. Beside me our pasta is heating up to the roar of our backpacking stove’s burning and while we wait for it to cook, we’ll do some stretches to release the tension of today’s hike.
Our site is a bit off shore from Jenny Lake with Grand Teton herself looming over the trees. Today, despite a small bit of hail and rain, we enjoyed a 13 mile hike around the lake and through a canyon. There were quite a few people sharing the trail, but as usual, we run the late night shift, and they were coming as we were going. We saw several moose and shared the awe and beauty with our fellow hikers. The moose, even a mother and calf, chewed their grass nonchalantly as we tiptoed ever closer, cameras flashing and clicking wildly. We stood around them in disbelief for long periods of time, within 10 feet of the beautiful creatures – one photographer said “They’re too close for my zoom! Get me a wide angle lens!” We could see the enormous size and soft fuzz of their antlers and the necks that sustain their weight; we viewed up close the famous dangling chin-like protrusion.
The hike was a beautiful one, and despite spending the last several days in national parks, Ori and I felt for the first time that we were finally in nature. Yellowstone felt more like nature in a museum – a packaged sort of natural wonder made accessible to the old, the minivan family, the invalid. I think this is a wonderful thing. Truly. The brilliance of the national park system is that some of the most magnificent natural wonders – from geysers and waterfalls to 50 million year old trees have been preserved and made accessible to such a wide array of audiences. All in one –the parks preserve natural spaces and habitats, provide a sort of Eden for wildlife and allow the public an easy (physically and mentally) way to be in nature. You can sleep in a nice hotel, eat three meals in a restaurant (plus a stop for ice cream) and then drive by deer on your way to see a bubbling mud hole at 5000 feet. The parks go further though. For the “hard core” – there is back country camping, climbing and more. What we learned during our few days at Yellowstone is that stopping at all the “sites” of a national park is far less thrilling for us than one long hike. And that crowds and nature is not our favorite cocktail. Nonetheless, we loved it enough to want to see it one day in the winter –and to take hundreds of photos…
Tomorrow we are headed to Boise, Idaho via Craters of the Moon National Monument.