July 19, 2006--Wednesday In Wyoming: One Brief Moment
The sun was setting over the Tetons. A small crowd of visitors with drinks in hand gathered outside the Jackson lake Lodge to watch the sun roll behind those magnificent mountains before dropping off the edge of the earth and plunging us all into instant darkness and chilling breezes.
“I take a lot of pictures but never develop any.” Rona and I were snapped out of our contemplative end-of-day reverie by a decidedly overweigh man with a camera hanging from his neck that was so large with its protruding lens that only his amazing stomach could support it. He was obviously from the middle of the country and from his tractor we imagined he had seen enough sunsets in his life to satisfy him. What was the big deal about another even in a place such as this?
Being from New York City, we of course could never get enough of these sunsets and are additionally expert at extracting the full meaning from every degree of the sun’s decline. Thus, we ignored him.
But he persisted, “I’ve been coming here every year since 1987. Sometimes even twice a year. Me and the Mrs. drive our RV here all the way from Georgia, where we’re from.” Since things were slipping from bad to worse, I tried turning my back on him. Rona looked into her glass of sweet Vermouth.
“You see my son over there? Well he was three the first time we came here. He also had a camera. He spent three whole days taking pictures and carefully advancing the film. They still used film back then. Well, when we about to leave he took the film out of the camera and just threw it in the trash. In one of them cans over there. My wife, Rosie, she was fit to be tied and while she rummaged around in that can looking for the film I asked Billy, whose over there by the bench, why he did that. He said to me, exasperated like, ‘Dad, I’m done taking those pictures.’ He was puzzled why I was asking him about it. You see, to him just taking the pictures was what was important. Not the pictures themselves. I think there’s a lesson there.”
That got our attention. We’re always interested in anything that yields lessons and this one seemed pretty good. So I ventured, “What keeps bringing you back here every year? It’s a long drive.”
“Well, you see I’m a forester, a freelance one, and I keep coming here to check on this place. To see how things are changing. And they are, ain’t no doubt about that. And I don’t mean the result of them fires up in Yellowstone. That’s a part of nature. A good thing. It’s the other thing that worries me.”
“The ‘other thing?’”
“Yeah, you know what the scientists have been saying. I’ll show you what I mean. Look over there at Mount Moran. You see that glacier over there?” We looked across Jackson Lake and nodded. “Well, when I started coming here that glacier was twice the size it is now. Don’t take me for a tree-hugger. That I’m not. But it seems to me that we have this one brief moment. For me it’s almost over, my heart’s not been right, but for Billy, who’s only twenty-two, I’m worried. You know, in the past it was religious fanatics and cult leaders who predicted the end of the world was coming. They even came up with this date or that. Of course it never happened. But what’s different now is that we have every scientist agreeing that things are not heading in a good direction for us. So that’s why I keep my eye on that glacier.”
This was not a lesson we had driven all this way to hear, so I changed the subject, “You mentioned that you do forestry work freelance. I always assumed that guys in your field would have to work for the government.”
“Well, that’s true. Everyone else I went to school with does work for the Forestry Service or some other government aging. I though saw a niche for myself so I’ve been doing it on my own.”
“How’s that? How does that work.”
He suddenly turned silent; but since he started this I pressed on him, New-York style, “You worked for developers or something?”
After a moment he said, “Sort of like that.” I held up to give him a minute. It was clear that he really didn’t want to talk about this. But he added, “You’ve driven around this area, right?”
“Yes, just yesterday and today through eastern Washington and then across the panhandle of Idaho to get here.”
“And what did you see?”
“Most of it was amazingly beautiful,” Rona said, “We followed the Clearwater River for more than 200 miles.”
“And?”
We didn’t get where he was going so we just looked back at him. He hitched his pants up over that huge belly, “Did you see all those developments closing in?” We nodded again.
He didn’t answer his own question. He just stood there staring off at Mount Moran.
Then he looked around to catch Rosie’s eye, she had been circling us, never coming closer than twenty feet, “There she is. I better get going before I catch hell. Nice to talkin’ to you.”
And he was gone.
“I take a lot of pictures but never develop any.” Rona and I were snapped out of our contemplative end-of-day reverie by a decidedly overweigh man with a camera hanging from his neck that was so large with its protruding lens that only his amazing stomach could support it. He was obviously from the middle of the country and from his tractor we imagined he had seen enough sunsets in his life to satisfy him. What was the big deal about another even in a place such as this?
Being from New York City, we of course could never get enough of these sunsets and are additionally expert at extracting the full meaning from every degree of the sun’s decline. Thus, we ignored him.
But he persisted, “I’ve been coming here every year since 1987. Sometimes even twice a year. Me and the Mrs. drive our RV here all the way from Georgia, where we’re from.” Since things were slipping from bad to worse, I tried turning my back on him. Rona looked into her glass of sweet Vermouth.
“You see my son over there? Well he was three the first time we came here. He also had a camera. He spent three whole days taking pictures and carefully advancing the film. They still used film back then. Well, when we about to leave he took the film out of the camera and just threw it in the trash. In one of them cans over there. My wife, Rosie, she was fit to be tied and while she rummaged around in that can looking for the film I asked Billy, whose over there by the bench, why he did that. He said to me, exasperated like, ‘Dad, I’m done taking those pictures.’ He was puzzled why I was asking him about it. You see, to him just taking the pictures was what was important. Not the pictures themselves. I think there’s a lesson there.”
That got our attention. We’re always interested in anything that yields lessons and this one seemed pretty good. So I ventured, “What keeps bringing you back here every year? It’s a long drive.”
“Well, you see I’m a forester, a freelance one, and I keep coming here to check on this place. To see how things are changing. And they are, ain’t no doubt about that. And I don’t mean the result of them fires up in Yellowstone. That’s a part of nature. A good thing. It’s the other thing that worries me.”
“The ‘other thing?’”
“Yeah, you know what the scientists have been saying. I’ll show you what I mean. Look over there at Mount Moran. You see that glacier over there?” We looked across Jackson Lake and nodded. “Well, when I started coming here that glacier was twice the size it is now. Don’t take me for a tree-hugger. That I’m not. But it seems to me that we have this one brief moment. For me it’s almost over, my heart’s not been right, but for Billy, who’s only twenty-two, I’m worried. You know, in the past it was religious fanatics and cult leaders who predicted the end of the world was coming. They even came up with this date or that. Of course it never happened. But what’s different now is that we have every scientist agreeing that things are not heading in a good direction for us. So that’s why I keep my eye on that glacier.”
This was not a lesson we had driven all this way to hear, so I changed the subject, “You mentioned that you do forestry work freelance. I always assumed that guys in your field would have to work for the government.”
“Well, that’s true. Everyone else I went to school with does work for the Forestry Service or some other government aging. I though saw a niche for myself so I’ve been doing it on my own.”
“How’s that? How does that work.”
He suddenly turned silent; but since he started this I pressed on him, New-York style, “You worked for developers or something?”
After a moment he said, “Sort of like that.” I held up to give him a minute. It was clear that he really didn’t want to talk about this. But he added, “You’ve driven around this area, right?”
“Yes, just yesterday and today through eastern Washington and then across the panhandle of Idaho to get here.”
“And what did you see?”
“Most of it was amazingly beautiful,” Rona said, “We followed the Clearwater River for more than 200 miles.”
“And?”
We didn’t get where he was going so we just looked back at him. He hitched his pants up over that huge belly, “Did you see all those developments closing in?” We nodded again.
He didn’t answer his own question. He just stood there staring off at Mount Moran.
Then he looked around to catch Rosie’s eye, she had been circling us, never coming closer than twenty feet, “There she is. I better get going before I catch hell. Nice to talkin’ to you.”
And he was gone.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
12:32 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home