amymarquis

sunset on jackson lake

It’s just after noon. I’m sitting in a camp chair looking out at Jackson Lake, a vast body of water that fills the space between cattle country and 13,000-foot peaks in Grand Teton National Park. Only a few tall lodgepoles interrupt the view of the Tetons themselves—the largest of which cradles a small glacier that has been clinging to those same granite cliffs for thousands of years. The grizzlies and elk have eluded us so far, but there’s plenty else to see: This morning, a small white-tailed buck leapt through our site, then sparred with a young sapling in the pine grove to our right. Skinny chipmunks and tiny grey voles rustle in the bushes, which Suki watches with an intensity I’ve never seen in her before. Hundreds of tiny flies swarm in patches of sun but mercifully keep to themselves. The plainest grasshoppers spread brilliant yellow wings that make sharp snapping sounds as they dance above the meadow. I keep hoping to spot the grizzly mom and cubs that are rumored to live on the island across the water, but no luck yet. I’ll keep trying.

It got cold here last night—35 degrees, I think—so we threw our sleeping bags like comforters over the bed. Even now, sitting in the sun, I’m bundled up in a hoodie and Smart Wool socks. Summer feels like a past life—as do the days when we were blasting our AC in a driveway in Oakton, in suffocating Virginia heat. When we ran errands, battled traffic, went to work, met deadlines, and packed and organized and bid each friend farewell, all in the span of an 18-hour day—and then woke up to do it all over again.

So maybe it’s no surprise that 10 days into our trip, I still feel like I could sleep for weeks. But sleeping in is hard here. You want to wake at sunrise, pull out the yoga mat, and flow through a sun salutation. You want to drink tea on a chilly lakeshore before the campground begins to stir.

Tom and I have had the most fun watching Suki take in this place. I expected her to greet it with a sense of shock and awe, not so different from our own reactions: “It’s so beautiful!” “This view is insane!” “That mountain is enormous!” But she doesn’t seem to be surprised by much. It’s like she always knew this was here—that she comes from this land, and that it was only a matter of time until she returned to it. If a pack of wolves ran through our site, I swear she’d follow and never look back.

In some ways, Tom and I are trying to do the same—trying to find ourselves. We joke that we won’t be able to get rid of our big-city edge—that we’ll develop these reputations in Boulder as “DC Tom” and “East Coast Amy” for our road rage and impatience with automated telephone menus. But I know that buried underneath those sub-personalities is the real Tom, and the real Amy. The ones who know that it’s okay to sit on a lakeshore and write for an afternoon, never mind that there’s a trailer to tidy up, a photograph to take, or better yet, hundreds of miles of trails to explore. The ones who seek the wisdom of the things around us—sparrows, lapping waves, grazing deer—and learn to embody the rhythm of this place.

How refreshing, to be part of something that’s bigger than ourselves again.