The Voice of God and the Fury of Nature - Wyoming 2023
They say you can never go home, it won’t match your memories.
But you can go back to the place where you became a man.
Just don’t be surprised if that wild land tests you again.
The Tetons did just that.
They tested the mettle they carved into me all those years ago, and this time, the test weighed 1,000 pounds, had 4-inch claws, 3-inch canines, and wanted dinner.
When I was 16 years old, I wanted to get out of my little town, which wasn't very little at all. St. Louis just felt claustrophobic to me. I wanted to experience something wildly different.
So I went west.
Apache and I…. on one of our first outings
I found myself in a tiny place called Crowheart, Wyoming, in the Wind River Valley, working on a dude ranch as the hired hand. Tending the horses, bailing hay, and leading guests on rides up the Continental Divide. It was wild. I fell in love with God's country, as it's called out there, the big sky, the mountains, which were mine to tame. It was intoxicating.
I got in shape. I learned the true definition of hard work, working 4:30 a.m. till midnight every day without end. I loved it. Riding out to check fences. Cutting cattle (the practice of dividing the herd into smaller groups) for sale, branding, or harvest. I learned to rope, and ride broncs and even bulls.
Every third Saturday was a local rodeo, where all the ranches would compete for bragging rights of whose wranglers were the most manly. I was by far the youngest. Most of my peers were 27 to 33 years old, so I felt especially determined to prove my manhood.
Thats me with the mullet
Sundays were the shortest workdays, typically with the mornings open by tradition. I'd ride up into the mountains or the slot canyons and take in the vistas.
I recall one day I was out in the slot canyons as a storm bellowed on the horizon. I was smart enough to know the canyon was a death trap with the rain coming, so I rode out. But the thunder... it would travel down the canyons and hit you in the chest. The horses were used to it, but for me, it felt like the very voice of God.
I could only imagine it sounded similar to what Moses heard when he was confronted by the burning bush. It was a sound I've never heard since, not even later in life with low passes from an A-10 or F/A-18, or explosions, nothing matched that deep rumble.
I recall leading a group into a canyon a week or two later when we heard that first rumble. I snapped a picture of the epicness around us on an old point-and-shoot 35mm film camera loaded with Kodak. It had a panoramic feature that allowed wide shots.
I let the ride go ahead of me and set up the camera on a rock next to my horse named Apache. I loved riding him because he LOVED to run, more than any horse I've ridden before or since. He just loved it, which made him my favorite. Everyone else disliked him, but I loved the quirk others hated. Perhaps even then, I had started rooting for the outcasts and didn't realize it.
I took the photo. As the exposure finished, a wave of cool air hit me coming down the canyon, followed by an epic rumble. Because of the way sound travels and echoes down the canyon, it somehow elongates the thunder, stretches it out. A boom miles away turns into the roar like the voice of the almighty.
We turned the guests back and got back just before a torrent of rain hit the ranch. Just had time to get the saddles off the 30-some-odd horses and release them into the small pasture near the buildings. Never wanted to leave one tied up in a thunderstorm.
That time in Wyoming stuck with me. I ached to get back into the big sky. As I had kids and grew as a father, I knew when they were old enough, we'd head back. I'd show them the small town of Dubois I spent time at. The speedbump of a town Crowheart was. The mountains and slot canyons. The Tetons.
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees”
That range haunted me. I remember cresting a ridgeline pass on horseback and seeing those mountains illuminated by the afternoon sun for the first time. They shone with defiance, pushing up from the crust of the earth, carving toward heaven like they were desperate to touch it. Because of the Snake River Valley, they just erupt from the earth in a way rare for mountains on this planet. They have an aura all their own.
Leaving them behind was a sadness I didn't realize I'd feel for decades. That feeling of loss matured. When I finally went back 25 years later to show my family, I saw it afresh through their eyes. The splendor and radiance of that place was fresh all over again.
We found a cabin down on the Wind River, not a mile from the ranch I worked, now long gone. I showed them the red rocks, the Continental Divide. We went on a trail ride. I revealed the majesty of one of the most beautiful places on Earth, a place Ansel Adams couldn't resist. The Snake River leading up to the grand mountains we call the Tetons.
“The Tetons and the Snake River provide perhaps the most sublime moment of all my photographic life.”
We ate under the sky. No restaurants. We cooked out, ate like kings, including fresh salmon, which brought about one of our most dangerous encounters of the trip.
We set up for dinner in a clearing mostly blocked off from any traffic. It wasn’t a place many people had been recently. I got out the grill and began to cook the salmon. The aromas wafting up were delectable. I was famished after a day of hiking up to Hidden Falls. The sun was beginning to set. Clouds wreathed Mt. Moran and the Grand. Light streamed in from broken cloud cover.
I was marveling at the environment we found ourselves in, alone in the woods, away from all the traffic and tourists, one with God's creation. I loved this little clearing on the north end. I was looking across it, maybe 30 feet across. A perfect oasis from the woods.
And my eyes locked on another set of eyes, watching me.
As soon as our eyes locked, he stepped into the clearing. An epically large full-grown male grizzly. The hump on his back easily my height. He looked at me, cocking his head, observing, almost as if I were the subject in a zoo and he the tourist.
I calmly said, "There's a bear. Get inside the truck."
My family froze. Began to search for it. As they moved toward the truck, I grabbed the bear spray and readied myself.
I’ve faced off with death before in my life, trust me when I tell you… it hits different when you are the only thing between 1000lbs of muscle, fury and carnage and your family, there is no fear for yourself it doesn’t even tickle at your mind… instead your mind, body, muscles and instincts flood with a primal fire all of it’s own… that says.. “you will NOT touch them”….
“Some men stare into the eyes of a beast and find fear. Others find themselves.”
The bear chuffed and sniffed the air. Then, with a look of utter boredom, he turned and ran off to the east, toward Signal Mountain.
It was surreal. To share a moment with one of nature’s most primal and formidable warriors. To feel prepared to put yourself to the ultimate test… to stare down such a creature….. I felt like he judged me in that moment. And left me wondering what he judged me to be.
The salmon tasted all the more delicious after that.
We saw many more "locals" while we were there. My kids especially loved spotting the moose, elk, and of course the brown bear, always a treat.
We drove through the mountains back to our cabin that night, my kids having a newfound appreciation for my old stories of this raw and wild land. Perhaps one day, they’ll show their own children where they shared a sacred moment in a clearing, judged by a wild grizzly of the Tetons.
