Parallel
Over two weeks, I drove north-south on that road twenty times or more. It couldn’t have been more lovely moving alongside the Tetons in their summer moods; during storms, under a rug of fog, with peaks hidden by wildfire smoke, dotted by a full herd of elk, with planes landing alongside.
The first week I drove it with my boys in the car. The second week, by myself or with a friend who came to hike with me. Once, I stopped roadside, lifted the back gate of my car, and stared at the mountains for a half hour. I was the subject of an Instagram photo no one was taking.
I walked up into the Tetons and afterwards pointed to where I’d been. I buzzed past them at car-level speeds and ascended at achingly slow human velocity.
There was another parallel though, because I could have chosen this city instead of my Utah mountain town. Sure, there were more cowboy hats here but the familiar ski rental shops sat on every corner, a main street with ice cream stores and boutiques. Jackson had similar sorts of tourists, obvious coming out of the grocery store with their twenty-packs of beer and evident sunburn lines from a few unprotected hours at 7,000 feet.
There’s a parallel life where the drive was every day.
But there’s also a parallel life where this was the only time I’d see the mountains all year. A parallel life where I only saw it for five days my whole life.
A parallel life where I never made it here at all.
During those two weeks this summer, I would turn perpendicular from that north-south road and head into a quieter side-canyon to our campground. Away from the spectacular, towards the quieter on a road that went from National Park to National Forest - the road quality reflected as much, but so did the freedom.
I drove alongside, I hiked up into, I turned away to find a quieter spot. I walked among the tourists, I was a tourist myself. I turned my head from side to side and surveyed both the mountains and the alternate “me”s in relation to the mountains, the West, the living.
I’m here but some versions of me are not. So I’ll step forward, keep going up and down the road, for all of us.
Inspired by events in Grand Teton National Park & Jackson, Wyoming
On the land of the Shoshone-Bannock, Eastern Shoshone, Mountain Shoshone (Tukudeka), Apsáalooke (Crow), Niitsitapi (Blackfeet), Nimiipuu (Nez Perce), Hinono'eino (Northern Arapaho), and Aaniiih (Gros Ventre) nations.