Part One
I first discovered Wyoming on a coast-to-coast bicycle trip in the summer of 1981. I stopped at the base of the Grand Tetons and camped for five days at Jenny Lake. The entire trip took me 5 weeks, and I spent 5 of my 35 days hiking and fishing in Grand Teton National Park and cycling back and forth to the town of Jackson Hole. From the moment I got off my bike at Jenny Lake until this day, I have always known that is where I wanted to spend the rest of my life. When I met the woman I eventually married, we were living in Manhattan, NY. She had to meet my first prerequisite before I would even ask her on a date. I posed the question every potential girl friend has had to answer since 1981 - "If you were married and your husband wanted to live in Wyoming, would you have a problem with that?" Obviously, my wife passed the test. Two years later, we moved to Wilson, a small town 15 miles from Jackson at the foot of the Grand Teton Pass.
There are things that make Wyoming special that are hard to put into words. Likewise, there are things that make Teton County special, but very different from most of Wyoming. The purpose of this report is to try to explain why I find Wyoming unique and one of the most excellent places I have ever been.
The skiing, rock climbing, fishing, and hunting are among the best that the county has to offer. Other outdoor activities include backcountry skiing, dog sledding, camping, hot springs, mountain biking, snow mobiling, horseback riding, hang gliding, adventure racing, horse racing, rodeos, white water rafting/kayaking, gliding, and wilderness orienteering.
The trees were mostly evergreens and aspens and seemed hundreds of years old. Some of them were huge. Most of the people we met seemed healthy and sturdy if not down right rugged. Unlike most of the places we have lived, when we met people, they just asked approximately where you lived and where you skied. We were not subject to the "20 questions" that folks in many other areas of the country hit strangers with - like "do you have any kin around here, where do you work, what church do y'all go to, what brings you out here," and other questions that I think are nobodies business. The people we encountered wanted privacy and respected ours. In the year that I lived there, I never had a key to my house, and never removed my keys from my truck. The people I met were all happy to be there and wishing that others had not discovered it and driven the property prices through the roof.
When I opened an account for video rentals, I put down my name and phone number. No SSN, no Drivers license, no home address, nothing. I asked, "is this all you need?" and the clerk said, "yeah, you're not planning on leaving town anytime soon, are you?"
When we opened a checking account, the people were friendly and courteous. One day, I went in to make a deposit of $12,000. The girl looked at me and said, "are you sure you want to put ALL this in one deposit?" when I asked why wouldn't I, she explained that she wasn't really supposed to tell me this, but anything over $10,000 had to be reported to the government. I appreciated her assistance and made two deposits instead of one. I cannot imagine another bank in the country offering such advise, but others may exist.
There was a small town feeling, without the small town gossip. People work hard and play hard. During hunting season, businesses close down so that their employees and owners can go hunting. When you are hiking, or camping away from the towns, there is a closeness with nature that I have never seen anywhere else. The animals and humans seem to co-exist in harmony. I believe it is one of the only places in this country where you can imagine what it must have been like to visit the west before the white man destroyed it. There are literally hundreds of miles of backcountry where one can hike or camp for weeks and never see another human. When you live in Wyoming, it is hard to explain how much larger the sky is. The mountains in the distance seem to give you a perspective that you can only get out west. While there, we saw bear, mule deer, elk, big horn sheep, antelope, mountain lion, owl, bald eagle, golden eagle, hawks, wild horses, and moose.
The town of Jackson had a rodeo, and the town of Wilson had a "practice rodeo" right next to the park. On Wednesday's I would take my kids to the park and we could watch the cowboys practice their rodeo skills while the girls played in the park. In town, there were two theaters where plays were performed every day of the summer, 20 or more art galleries, a country music saloon that has a bear on display that was killed by one of the previous residents with his bare hands when he was 60 years old! There is a shopping district downtown that mostly caters to tourists but is quaint and surrounds the town square, which is framed in thousands of pounds of elk antlers. In the winter, just north of town is one of the largest elk refuge in the country. There is an excellent smoke shop, three ski resorts, two golf courses, a few museums, a world class fly shop, 3 theaters, a ballet company, a symphony, a damn good hockey team, a great community center with a pool for swimming, scuba lessons, and kayak lessons. There is also a new hospital.
While we were there, my wife gave birth to my second child. We inquired about a midwife because we had used one for our first baby and found if a very pleasant experience. In Jackson, the doctor's wife was a midwife and my wife gave birth at the foot of a king sized bed in a private room. The entire staff treated us like family and there was no rush for them to take the baby, give shots or any of the other things one might associate with childbirth. My wife and I held the baby for an hour before they took it away for only a few minutes. It was a peaceful, relaxing experience.