This trip was originally booked kinda last minute and impulsively because of an available medical conference, then it turned into kind of a pilgrimage about a treasured photo from my mother and grandmother's visit here in 1932, then through our friend Barbara we were connected with some local people we really enjoyed and hope to stay in touch with. But the pleasure was really about the glories of hiking in an amazingly resplendent place where wild animal dangers abound... Something that's really reassuring to find on our planet, where the wild lands and habitat are usually not protected, and glorified, in this way. And seeing such an amazing variety of natural geographical wonders... so many geographic and geologic marvels. Oh, and, a chance to see the current generation of mainland Chinese tourists in action. (So in a way, lots of unfamiliar life to see-- though not quite as expected). Finally, it was the time when I finally got my myasthenia sea legs under me... Could hike and interact with the world in a way that has been unavailable to me for a year.
What we did
We flew in to Jackson and overnighted here, to get settled and see the east side of the valley. Then we had five nights in the ski resort because of my conference - lots of biking and hiking. Then we spent two nights up closer to Yellowstone and focused on it, spending very long days...the days are about sixteen hours of light right now. Finally we returned to Jackson to rest, recuperate.. And eat.
Jackson, the town
Writing a week later about Jackson is hard, but my main impression about Jackson is wow, the food, and the second one is, wow, that's the last thing I'd ever expect to be writing about a rural western town, well, call me Ignorant. Jackson is the home of Oscar Ortega, a Mexico City chocolatier and world prize winning gelato maker (flavor that won in Italy was Mexican cactus, tuna) ... The Wild Sage.... Sweetwater... Countless eating opportunities. What is it? Is it the migrants from both coasts? Is it that, being so close to parts of Utah and Idaho where you can't find much alcohol or tobacco, you have to compensate by eating the most delicately flavored and blended comestibles in the world? Anyway....
Jackson has come a long way since my mom and grandmother visited its Frontier Days rodeo in 1932, and to be honest though I saw lots of horse riding and a few rodeo folks, I did not get the slightest glimmer of real Cowboys or ranches... Only the dude wrangler kind. I didn't really care. The real call of Jackson Hole is the wildlife .... The roaming pronghorn antelope, bison, elks and moose, not to mention the wolves and coyotes to keep them in control,..and the beavers.... And the bears.... and really, cows were just not so very compatible with all that. And we were lucky to be here when the snow made the grand mountains even grander and peakier, and yet the constant rains of the past month made the sage lands and aspen/pine forests an amazing green with huge varieties of windflowers and birds.
The thing that seemed missing was the idea of living off the land, everything built nowadays is quite luxurious and/or quaint. I missed recollections of Indians and then ranches, the scenery really provoked the feeling that those things should be here. No modern native Americans that I noticed nor any working cattle operations. I would have really liked to have crested a sagey bluff and found myself looking down on a cluster of tipis from two hundred years ago. I missed that feeling, though the ghosts were always there ... In the southwest the remainders of humans of prior centuries are visible on the land... In Jackson, and Yellowstone, modern buildings just wipe that out. Even the remainders of the ranches are hard to see even though in much of rest of the west old tumbledown paint peeling ranches stand in the landscape here and there seemingly everywhere.
