Same Place. Different Time.
The Grand Tetons
In the Grand Tetons Dwayne and I drive a winding dirt road to an oxbow bend in the Snake River, a place called Kettleman’s Bridge. It is a quiet place, quieter than any we’ve seen in this national park. I think because the road is not paved, fewer people explore this far.
The handful of people here are silent or talking in a hushed reverent tones. There is a couple to our left, the wife looking through binoculars at the birds. Two women walk the shore, one pointing her large-lensed camera into the foliage. In front of us is a young couple. The wife is curled in a camping chair with an unopened book and the husband is fly fishing, the line catching the sun like a stray light strand.
Dwayne is peering through binoculars and then back at his phone trying to identify the birds on the other side of the river. And I am breathing in the air, looking around, savoring the entirety of this day.
Suddenly, an enormous bald eagle swoops down, interrupting the stillness. Gracefully, it skims the water, scoops up a silver fish and, fish dangling from its talons, glides up and over the tree-line.
We strangers call out in awe, laughing into each other’s eyes. For a time we are united in collective wonder.
“My wife saw it up close in her binoculars,” the husband exclaims to no one in particular.
“You don’t see that every day!” Dwayne tells him.
The young wife in the camping chair responds in voice soft with wonder, “You sure don’t.”
We look at one another nodding, smiling. And then the quiet settles over us once again. Dwayne returns to his binoculars, finally identifies the birds on the other bank of the river. He passes me the binoculars.“They are mergansers. See the red heads?”
“Beautiful,” I whisper back as I watch the mergansers dip and bob in the water, their red heads sharp and up close in Dwayne’s field glasses.
As I’m lost in the watching of these birds, a new group of three arrives. I hear them before I see them, the man in the center is talking loudly.
“Imagine this in ’84, ’85, ’86,” he shouts gesturing around, “when not a fucking soul was here. It was perfect then. Not like now.” Jarred enough by his tone to glance up, I accidentally meet his eyes. Before I can look away I see. . . I’m not sure what exactly—rage, distain, anger, loss. Whatever it is, startles me, so out of sync with the peace in our little community.
Long after we return to our campsite, it comes to me. That man wasn’t there. Not really. He was in the past, seeing only loss. I’m sure the oxbow would have been a beautiful hidden place to enjoy the Tetons in the 80’s. But lost in the loss of that, he didn’t see the beauty of today. Just now as it is. The others, Dwayne, and I–we all got to experience wonder! His anger, his grief, kept him from it. Same place. Different time. I’m thankful I was there today.
