Wyoming is like a whole 'nother world, light years away from Washington. It's the least populous state in the Union, yet if you were to ask a foreigner to describe their image of the United States, chances are they would describe, at least in part, Wyoming. Wyoming seems to exist in a kind of temporal limbo, where the Old West won't lie quietly in it's shallow grave. Here, cyber cafes sit next to old bars, Thai food across from an outfitter's, sushi and sled rides.
The town of Jackson embodies all of this, it's primary industry is tourism, leading it to embrace this cultural schizophrenia. During the summer months, tourists can watch western-style shootouts and walk on pseudo-authentic wooden sidewalks eating Haagen-Dazs. Somehow, it's just not my thing. During the winter, except for a few skiers and hunters, the tourism trade shuts down. It can give you the feeling of being in a ghost town, especially on Sundays, when the stores close early, and no one is to be found.
It's a half hour drive from Jackson to the Teton Science School. Starting along a road that winds alongside the mountains. On your left are steep, forbidding hills out of a spaghetti western, no doubt full of bloodthirsty Indians (in fact played by out-of-work Italians). To the right is the National Elk Refuge, a broad, flat plain continuing for miles until it terminates in hills. Herds of elk range across it, grazing. You enter Grand Tetons National Park and turn onto Gros Venture Road, a two lane asphalt strip through the plain. Signs make it abundantly clear that you are not alone on this road: "Caution: Animal Migration Area", signs for bison crossing, and one in the Burma Shave tradition extolling you to drive carefully, lest you make a widow of some cow moose.
Thoroughly warned you barrel down the road, your head on a swivel, scanning the horizon for the brown, shaggy lumps of doom that are bison. Along the side of the road are small turnouts, ever so often you can see a large pick-up idling; inside is a hunter, sipping his coffee and glassing the horizon with binoculars. The man is looking for an elk to wander into range, at which point he will leap from his warm Ford cocoon, walk a few paces off the road, and blast away with his rifle. Call me a purist, but somehow that just doesn't seem sporting. Several miles down, the town of Kelly flares briefly and dies down just as quickly. Kelly's claim to fame is a post office, a store (open only during the summer) and a cluster of yurts. Kelly's population, by it's very nature transient and non-conformist, found the Mongolian mobile home well-suited to the plains, swept by the cold, secular winds.
After Kelly the yellow line disappears from the road, a few dirt tracks branch off like sulking children into the hills. A right on Ditch Creek Road takes you into the hills, and rounding a corner, brings you to the Teton Science School. My home for the next month.
The buildings here look very much in place, belonging to the landscape. A dining hall with large picture windows facing the Tetons dominates the front of the campus. You can sit, warm and sipping tea, looking at a panorama actually worthy of the term "epic". The Tetons rear out of the horizon, rough hewn by a giant. Jagged, craggy, and breathtaking. The Tetons are young mountains, formed by great geologic upheaval. Watching the sun slowly put it's fingers on the mountain in the morning, tickling the peaks, then slowly highlighting it's way down the slope, is one of the most pleasant sights to ever wake up to. It feels as though there is no distance between you and the mountains, at the same time fearful and benevolent; the lonesome plains in between erase time and distance. The schizophrenia of Jackson slips away under the stare of the Tetons.
We're not in Kansas anymore.
-Trey
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Road Trippin'
Two days of driving finally over, an excellent 800 miles across the West. I've gone from sea level to the Tetons. Leaving behind what I know for somewhere that is, quite frankly, alien to me, And I've got to say, I love it.
I started off on Thursday morning, fighting through rush hour traffic all the way to I-90 East, where it abruptly died off as it moved up into the Cascades, the sun was shining, glinting off the road as I crested the pass and moved towards Ellensburg. The road winds through outcroppings of naked red rock before it levels off into the broad plains of Eastern Washington. I stopped briefly in Sunnyside for a bite to eat.
As I was driving I listened to an audiobook called Ultramarathon Man, the autobiography of Dean Karnazes. It's his story as an ultramarathoner, a man who runs races in excess of 100 miles. I found myself in a degree of awe as I though about the endurance and willpower necessary to do such a thing. Here I was, going 75 miles an hour down a nice, wide highway, listening about a man running 200 miles across Southern California. It's a bit humbling.
I cut across Northeastern Oregon and into Idaho, climbing up through more mountains, the highway winding it's way past places with highly uplifting names, all seemingly involving death or dismemberment. As I reached the midpoint the land became desolate. Treeless, cold, rocky, barren. Cormac McCarthy would have been at home here. Old mining and agricultural equipment littered the side of the road , adding to the feeling that things just weren't all right. The only sign of working industry was a cement plant that loomed over the highway, arc lighting burning in the twilight as smoke and steam belched from it. It seemed unreal, squatting on the aptly named Cement Plant Road; as if it were some eternal archetype of soulless, inhuman machinery, the bones of the other factories it had devoured strewn across the landscape. I half expected to see Jawas scurrying about the ruins.
I came out of the mountains and started on my straight shot to Boise. Things flattened out considerably and I began to see more and more signs of human habitation on the road, passing through ever larger towns. Traffic picked up as soon as I crossed the city limits and I got off the Interstate to stay the night.
The Super 8 motel in Boise seemed like something out of William S. Burroughs. My room was at the far end of the top floor, next to a stairwell with an inoperative handle. I believe that's what they called a fire exit. I made a mental note to, in the event of a fire, to jump out of my window onto the soft-looking Datsun below. The halls had a few people milling about, smoking apathetically in front of the no smoking signs. Somewhere, an alarm clock was going off, it was 7:00 pm.
The continental breakfast down in the lobby wasn't half bad. I ate a bowl of granola and a few muffins as I chatted with an elderly couple from New Mexico, they were traveling around the country looking for a place to live, but everywhere prices were too high. They were headed to Canada to try their luck up there. It was one of those conversations where all you can do is just nod along to a laundry list of unfortunate events, which generally occur in a series.
I left Boise and drove east, into the rising sun. It was two lanes running across some of the flattest, most featureless land I'd ever seen. We Northwesterners are very used to trees and relatively short lines of sight, this expanse, with it's near featureless horizon and towering blue dome was overwhelming. I understood momentarily how Lewis and Clark's men had felt when they entered the Great Plains; as forest dwelling backwoodsmen and trappers, many of the men found themselves physically sickened by the vast openness. I managed about 80 miles per hour across that taiga, stopping only briefly for low-octane fuel and high-octane energy drinks.
I'm not one to be enticed by roadside attractions, but when I saw a bevy of tanks next to a sign advertising "Idaho's Largest Military Surplus Warehouse", I had to investigate. I pulled into the parking lot and immediately noticed that my Subaru was, without a doubt, the smallest vehicle there. Feeling mildly emasculated, I resolved to wander the warehouse until my testosterone levels recovered. The inside was like David Koresh's wet dream, aisle upon aisle of vaguely used smelling surplus awaited. I started at random and began to browse. The obligatory surplus standards were there: bins of thermal underwear, ancient boots looking like the castoffs of a Liberian militia, a smattering of impressive WWII-era vehicles, T-shirts with slogans running from the mild"Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" to the hyper-patriotic "Nuke Paris" to the ever popular batshit-insane "Sniper: Running Won't Help". It's worth noting that all of these T-shirts seemed to be in a size XL and up.
I bought a pair of snow gloves and saddled up, I wasn't stopping until Jackson. The broad stretch of highway turned into a two-lane strip running through farmland, ever nearing the mountains. As soon as I started up the winding mountain pass my ipod began to play Modest Mouse's "Blame It On The Tetons". I've always felt that Modest Mouse's music sums up the experience of Western American culture. The cowboys have died, the settlers have settled, and no one knows where they are going. They are evocative of the increasing sense of personal isolation in an increasingly connected world, the dichotomy of our cities and the sparsely populated no-man's land between; they even have an album aptly titled The Lonesome Crowded West. The nihilistic lyrics were a brilliant counterpoint to the natural beauty of the mountains.
I can say with all honestly that the Teton Pass was the most nerve-racking stretch of road I'd ever encountered. The road abuts steep cliffs as it winds it's way through the mountains. The feeling you get as you round a corner only to find yourself facing a fully loaded suicide-jockey barreling towards you... Suffice to say I could make a mint bottling it with the word Xtreme on the front, three bucks a pop.
Surviving the pants-wrecking terror I made it to Jackson and holed up in another Super 8, this one a step above Boise's aspiring leper colony. I've firmly ensconced myself in my room while I get ready to search for a meal. Jackson seems to pretty much close down this time of year, with only the locals and a few oddballs, such as myself. I could make the expected reference to The Shining, but what's the point?
-Trey
I started off on Thursday morning, fighting through rush hour traffic all the way to I-90 East, where it abruptly died off as it moved up into the Cascades, the sun was shining, glinting off the road as I crested the pass and moved towards Ellensburg. The road winds through outcroppings of naked red rock before it levels off into the broad plains of Eastern Washington. I stopped briefly in Sunnyside for a bite to eat.
As I was driving I listened to an audiobook called Ultramarathon Man, the autobiography of Dean Karnazes. It's his story as an ultramarathoner, a man who runs races in excess of 100 miles. I found myself in a degree of awe as I though about the endurance and willpower necessary to do such a thing. Here I was, going 75 miles an hour down a nice, wide highway, listening about a man running 200 miles across Southern California. It's a bit humbling.
I cut across Northeastern Oregon and into Idaho, climbing up through more mountains, the highway winding it's way past places with highly uplifting names, all seemingly involving death or dismemberment. As I reached the midpoint the land became desolate. Treeless, cold, rocky, barren. Cormac McCarthy would have been at home here. Old mining and agricultural equipment littered the side of the road , adding to the feeling that things just weren't all right. The only sign of working industry was a cement plant that loomed over the highway, arc lighting burning in the twilight as smoke and steam belched from it. It seemed unreal, squatting on the aptly named Cement Plant Road; as if it were some eternal archetype of soulless, inhuman machinery, the bones of the other factories it had devoured strewn across the landscape. I half expected to see Jawas scurrying about the ruins.
I came out of the mountains and started on my straight shot to Boise. Things flattened out considerably and I began to see more and more signs of human habitation on the road, passing through ever larger towns. Traffic picked up as soon as I crossed the city limits and I got off the Interstate to stay the night.
The Super 8 motel in Boise seemed like something out of William S. Burroughs. My room was at the far end of the top floor, next to a stairwell with an inoperative handle. I believe that's what they called a fire exit. I made a mental note to, in the event of a fire, to jump out of my window onto the soft-looking Datsun below. The halls had a few people milling about, smoking apathetically in front of the no smoking signs. Somewhere, an alarm clock was going off, it was 7:00 pm.
The continental breakfast down in the lobby wasn't half bad. I ate a bowl of granola and a few muffins as I chatted with an elderly couple from New Mexico, they were traveling around the country looking for a place to live, but everywhere prices were too high. They were headed to Canada to try their luck up there. It was one of those conversations where all you can do is just nod along to a laundry list of unfortunate events, which generally occur in a series.
I left Boise and drove east, into the rising sun. It was two lanes running across some of the flattest, most featureless land I'd ever seen. We Northwesterners are very used to trees and relatively short lines of sight, this expanse, with it's near featureless horizon and towering blue dome was overwhelming. I understood momentarily how Lewis and Clark's men had felt when they entered the Great Plains; as forest dwelling backwoodsmen and trappers, many of the men found themselves physically sickened by the vast openness. I managed about 80 miles per hour across that taiga, stopping only briefly for low-octane fuel and high-octane energy drinks.
I'm not one to be enticed by roadside attractions, but when I saw a bevy of tanks next to a sign advertising "Idaho's Largest Military Surplus Warehouse", I had to investigate. I pulled into the parking lot and immediately noticed that my Subaru was, without a doubt, the smallest vehicle there. Feeling mildly emasculated, I resolved to wander the warehouse until my testosterone levels recovered. The inside was like David Koresh's wet dream, aisle upon aisle of vaguely used smelling surplus awaited. I started at random and began to browse. The obligatory surplus standards were there: bins of thermal underwear, ancient boots looking like the castoffs of a Liberian militia, a smattering of impressive WWII-era vehicles, T-shirts with slogans running from the mild"Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" to the hyper-patriotic "Nuke Paris" to the ever popular batshit-insane "Sniper: Running Won't Help". It's worth noting that all of these T-shirts seemed to be in a size XL and up.
I bought a pair of snow gloves and saddled up, I wasn't stopping until Jackson. The broad stretch of highway turned into a two-lane strip running through farmland, ever nearing the mountains. As soon as I started up the winding mountain pass my ipod began to play Modest Mouse's "Blame It On The Tetons". I've always felt that Modest Mouse's music sums up the experience of Western American culture. The cowboys have died, the settlers have settled, and no one knows where they are going. They are evocative of the increasing sense of personal isolation in an increasingly connected world, the dichotomy of our cities and the sparsely populated no-man's land between; they even have an album aptly titled The Lonesome Crowded West. The nihilistic lyrics were a brilliant counterpoint to the natural beauty of the mountains.
I can say with all honestly that the Teton Pass was the most nerve-racking stretch of road I'd ever encountered. The road abuts steep cliffs as it winds it's way through the mountains. The feeling you get as you round a corner only to find yourself facing a fully loaded suicide-jockey barreling towards you... Suffice to say I could make a mint bottling it with the word Xtreme on the front, three bucks a pop.
Surviving the pants-wrecking terror I made it to Jackson and holed up in another Super 8, this one a step above Boise's aspiring leper colony. I've firmly ensconced myself in my room while I get ready to search for a meal. Jackson seems to pretty much close down this time of year, with only the locals and a few oddballs, such as myself. I could make the expected reference to The Shining, but what's the point?
-Trey
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