Tuesday, September 13, 2011

This morning we set off in the fog for the Jackson Lake Lodge. Behind the lodge, we walked a trail called the Lunch Tree Hill Trail. It took us up a big hill overlooking a flatland full of little ponds and wet meadow. The hill was called Lunch Tree because it was John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s favorite lunch spot during his travels in the Tetons in the 1920s. (Rockefeller donated most of the land for the park; the park was basically all his doing.)

We were walking through sagebrush and fog, and we saw two elk grazing at the edge of a pond in the meadow land down below. We were admiring wild strawberries and yellow grasses and pointing out chipmunks. Our conversations went something like this:

Rob: “Oh, look, chippy.”

Leslie: “Oh, how cute.”

We went into Jackson Lodge for a minute, and it was really neat–cozy and grand both at once. In the soaring common room, there was a huge stone fireplace with a fire, and there were old couches and Indian rugs and the comforting smells of breakfast. I could smell pancakes and bacon and fried potatoes. Sometimes it’s hard to be a vegan, hungry all the time.

We went on to the Jenny Lake area and walked the Moose Pond Loop. It was such a nice shady trail through the great old conifers. We crossed a little stream surrounded by cow parsnip and other lush, lacy plants. There were columbines. I kept taking pictures of the cow parsnips and the fluorescent green moss and the little wooden bridge. The stream had a shiny pebble bottom, and the water looked like Sprite. The pebbles looked like jewels. And I kept wishing Sophie was there so I could dress her up in a pretty dress and pose her on the bridge with a tea set and some teddy bear friends and take a picture. The bridge was the perfect setting for a teddy bear picnic–such a magical, fanciful place with sun sparkles and parsnip flowers like Queen Anne’s lace.

We had lunch today in Jackson at Bon Appe Thai. Rob spent the whole meal emailing his family pictures from the trip. “It will just take a moment,” he announced optimistically after the waitress took our order, “for me to send my picture postcards.”

After lunch, we went to see Mormon Row, the remnants of an old Mormon settlement in the park. The houses, cabins, barns, and other outbuildings date back to around 1900, I believe, and are being left by the park service to decay naturally. Cottonwoods and quaking aspens grow around the old irrigation ditches, which still flow like streams. The trees were full of birds–mountain bluebirds and birds I didn’t know the names of. The moldering, listing old houses had been taken over by birds–barn swallows and others. People were there bird watching and taking pictures of the birds.

Rob didn’t care for Mormon Row. He had expected it to be set up like a “tourist farm,” with animals and people in historic costumes. “But instead,” he said, “there are all these fences and you can’t get anywhere near anything. I must admit I’m disappointed. I expect more from my park service.”

We went on a “float” tonight down the Snake River. Our guide was a young ginger-haired guy named Mike who was totally awesome. He rowed our enormous raft single-handedly while speaking very knowledgeably about geology, history, and ecology. As Rob said, “He was a pro.”

We saw tons of wildlife as we floated along, including at least six beavers. We saw one beaver swimming with a branch in its mouth, busily toting the branch, and Mike pointed out beaver lodges galore. Once when Mike stopped the raft so one of the passengers could take a picture of the fabulous sunset over the Tetons, a beaver got mad and slapped his tail at us. It was awesome. It scared everybody.

Another great moment on the raft was when we were all watching a beaver and then suddenly a pair of sandhill cranes took off from the shore and flew low over the river into the sunset.

“That was awesome,” Mike said. “That was so perfect. I love sandhill cranes. They look like pterodactyls and they sound like pterodactyls too. I mean, listen to that. That sounds totally prehistoric, doesn’t it?”

Mike told us that most of the trees along the river were blue spruce, and he showed us how they have cones only at the tops, only in their top branches. He pointed out cottonwoods too. (“See? With that wrinkled bark?”) And he pointed out all the cottonwoods the beavers had chopped down.

He also showed us a massive bald eagle’s nest. He told us the eagles will use the same nest year after year, but they’ll add to it. Some old nests, he said, “can be about half the size of this raft and weigh about 2,000 pounds.”

He told us some great stuff about moose too, about what great swimmers they are. He said they could easily swim the length of Jackson Lake. He said moose can dive too, to get at the aquatic plants on the bottom. I think he said moose have been known to dive up to 18 feet deep.

Mike really kept us entertained on the trip. He was such a great speaker, so polished. He was so excited about everything, even though he’d floated down that stretch of river over 1,600 times. There was a bald eagle in a dead tree by the river’s edge. “Now wait until we come around this bend,” Mike said. “And you ought to be able to get a great picture. The sun will be at her back. It’ll be perfect!”

We had such a great time on the float. Rob was smiling the whole time. When we were done, he said, “Well, that was magical. Everything about it was just touched by magic.”

I think today was the best day of the vacation so far. There was a moment on the Moose Pond Loop when I was so happy, when I knew I had happiness right in my hand. We were crossing the little wooden bridge over the mountain stream. There were pretty cones on the bridge, and dew sparkles everywhere, and Indian paintbrush and cow parsnip. I felt overwhelmed by all the beauty and splendor, and I said to Rob, “Can you believe that right now is the good time, when the vacation is really happening, that it’s not before or after? Do you feel like you’re appreciating it enough?”

It was a wonderful warm morning, and I had become so accustomed to the “hole” ringed by mountains, the yellow sagebrush flats flooded with light, the boulders and asters and harebells and yarrow. I was used to sleeping in a cozy cabin with checkered curtains, to just walking all day and looking around, seeing elk and moose and bison in the sparkling distance.