I do not have any one place that I think of as my favorite place to be.  I have many such places.  A picture hangs on my office wall to remind me of one of those places, Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.  I have only been there twice in my life, each time for only a couple of days.  Nevertheless, the pleasant memories live on.  The simple picture, taken in July of 1985, does not show the usual magnificent peaks so famous in that park. 

The pointed spires of the Grand Teton, at 13,770 feet, or the broad shouldered Mount Moran, at 12,605 feet, are among the usual subjects of awesome photographs and paintings.  They soar up into the sky so far and so steeply that they appear blue gray, the color of distant mountains barely peeking above the horizon.  However, the Tetons are not distant; they are close and make you tip your head back to look at the tops sitting above glaciers on their flanks.  You look up at mountains that are close to six thousand feet above where you sit.  But they are close enough that you can discern the individual trees around the lower elevations.

From the shoreline of Jackson Lake, you can see the so-called tree line on Mount Moran, above which the weather is too harsh for trees to survive.  You look up at an angle just to follow that tree line around the mountain, but above it, you see rock... rock so massive that you start thinking of planets with their own gravity.  There is more rock above that, and snow.

In July there is still snow up there, and rock, blue gray solid restful rock.  Still, the mountain is taller.  At the very top, you can see details of that rock.  It has texture, shape, and color as if it is right next to you, but that mountain is way over across a lake from where you sit. 

Ordinary mountains rise a few thousand feet with a gentle slope and foothills visible descending toward you.  That is not so with the Tetons.  No gentle slope is visible here.  Rolling down hill would not be difficult from up top.  Stopping before you lose five thousand feet elevation might be difficult.

This photograph on my office wall does not show those magnificent features.  Instead, the only mountains visible show the lower rounded off ridges to the north of the major peaks.  Between the camera’s point of view and those low mountains, Ann and I are sitting on a gravel lakeshore looking off to the left.  I am pointing and we are both smiling.  

From the darkness of the distant mountains, it must be twilight, evening in fact.  Behind us, on the gravel beach are two of our children frolicking about.  The air is cool enough that Ann has a sweater draped across her shoulders.  We are looking at an offstage mountain soaring into the sky, but you, the onlooker, are viewing only what the camera froze in place at that instant in narrow tunnel vision.

You know that Mount Moran is there, dominating the skyline, by the smile reflected, or rather emitted, by our eyes.  The mountain is so massive, so hard, so soft, so distant and so close that you feel that it is your protector, scaring away enemies unnamed who dare not pick on you within the powerful gaze of this blue gray big brother and friend.  The kids dancing about, looking for interesting stones on that gravel lakeshore project the same confidence that, "All is well".

When you look at that picture, perhaps you do not smell the fresh water lake, the forest across the lake, the snow and ice on that unseen mountain. That is only because you have not been there to one of my favorite places, Grand Teton National Park.  If you have not been there, that is indeed a tragedy.  Start planning to go there.  Spend some time there.  Set a date in the not too distant future for the future is uncertain and no one should miss that lifelong memory-generating place.

Give me a call when you are ready.  Perhaps I will join you.

                        --Bob Kuhns