When I first hear the strange, eerie sound in the wilderness night, I am the only one awake in our tent. I finish recording the day’s happenings in my journal by candlelight, blow out the flame, zip up my sleeping bag and close my eyes.
Suddenly, they shoot back open at the sound of a high-pitched scream. It reminds me of children’s voices at an amusement park, only muffled and sounding far away. My husband, Todd, snores softly by my side, tuckered out after a long day of leading a string of llamas and scouting the way for his family traveling on the Continental Divide Trail. My children — son Bryce, 5, and daughter Sierra, 7 — are hunkered down in their bags, hats on, for it is late August and already quite cold in the Wyoming mountains. We’ve been hiking for two months on this national scenic trail that stretches for 3,100 miles along the Rocky Mountains from Canada to Mexico. My family and I come out here from Pennsylvania every summer to do a 500-mile stretch and slowly make our way to Mexico.
There it is again. I listen with my eyes wide open, as if they could help me hear more distinctly. Now it sounds like whistles, some far off, others close up. It’s elk bugling! They’re calling for mates. I rouse Todd and together we lie on our backs in the darkness, smiling, listening to the symphony. All night long they call from all sides of the forest. We feel like privileged guests in their wild world as we have for the entire seven weeks we’ve been in the wilderness.
When fatigue finally overtakes me and I fall asleep, I am awakened by another strange sound — a ripping, tearing sound right by my head, followed by a more leisurely chewing sound. I rustle my sleeping bag and it bounds away. In a few minutes it is back. I call out and, once again, am successful at scaring it away. Todd is too tired to care. In the morning, the mystery is solved. A deer had been eating grass and small plants by the tent.
This is a typical night in the back country, a far different experience than the one most tourists experience as they drive the auto tours in our national parks and sleep in campgrounds and motels. This way of traveling — hiking by day and sleeping on the ground in a tent and sleeping bag; not coming out of the mountains to re-supply for up to 14 days at a shot; being exposed to all kinds of weather — is not always easy and is not for everyone. But, it does bring you into the heart and soul of the land through which you are traveling. This is why my family and I are here.
We’re sleeping right by the wooden sign announcing our entrance into the Teton Wilderness-Jim Bridger National Forest in northwestern Wyoming, first established as a primitive area in 1934 and boasting 585,468 acres of roadless country. Yellowstone National Park butts up against its northern border.
When you enter a wilderness area by trail, the sign at the border is all the change that seems apparent in the land from one side to the other — at least until you get into the depths of the wilderness.
We had seen subtle signs of change miles before we reached the actual border. Up until this point, the sandy trail had been covered with various-sized boot and sneaker tracks. Abruptly, they were gone, and in their place were deer, elk and bear tracks. Suddenly, it feels as if we are in their country.
When you enter the Teton Wilderness from the north, you follow the Heart River downstream and the Snake River upstream. Following a river presents a different mindset than hiking through other kinds of terrain. It’s never static. Your mind doesn’t drift as much. We watch the Snake River when we’re next to it on the bank. We look for waterfalls, deep emerald pools, listening to the river’s gushing and roar. When we are high above it, watching how it curves and snakes, how one side of its bank is steep and greatly eroded, we understand why the trail was built up here safely above it.
Yellowstone’s devastating fires of 1988 licked the land this far south so you can look through the forest of grey and black skeleton trees to the river. There is an awesome beauty even now in the scattered burned areas as the bright green saplings work to bring the forest back. The forest floor looks like it burns still, for the vigorous fireweed, backlit from the autumn sky, is flame-colored and glowing.
Few humans are here. The heart of the Teton Wilderness is virtually undiscovered by hikers and backpackers. The trails follow the drainages and valleys and open bottomlands, for the most part, and avoid the more exciting craggy skyline. But these glacier-scoured valleys are very handsome, with abundant water, good campsites and feed for the llamas. The trails are easy, and they are safe. Ninety-six per cent of the use here is by stock, and they widen the trail to 12 feet in some stretches. Now, in late August, before hunting season begins, the trail is dry, the packers are resting and we have the country all to ourselves.
There isn’t a lot of wind in these protected valleys compared to the ridges right on the Divide. Up there, it never seems to cease and it has knocked us flat on the ground and even blown the saddles off the llamas. But all is calm in these Teton valleys.
As we climb out of the lowlands to Two Ocean Plateau, a 10,000-foot-high patch of open country with outstanding views in all directions, the wind picks up. Our guidebook advises an overnight stay in clear weather, recommending a nearby pond as a water source. We find the water level to be very low and must walk out far until the cracked and dried dirt turns to squishy mud by the water’s edge. Here, in the mud, a story is written, of every creature who lives on this plateau and visits this watering hole for a drink. Very large, very fresh bear tracks sink deep from the animal’s weight, and Todd puts his hand down to compare the shape and size. “Black bear, no grizz,” we both say.
The llamas are spooked. Their sensitive noses are able to discern the individual animal scents, while we humans detect nothing. They look around nervously, as if expecting to see a “local” lumber over a knoll and find us in his home. We feel like trespassers, as if we’re peeking in someone’s refrigerator or dresser drawers, into their private lives and habits. We fill up our water bag and go over a knoll, out of sight of the pond, not wanting to bother any who may come in for a drink tonight.
It takes a long time for the llamas to settle down to eating and chewing their cuds. There is so much land to check out. So much territory to scope for movement, for danger approaching. But we are in heaven. We take our guidebook and compass and climb to four different knolls and read aloud about the views and mountain ranges that surround our spot on all sides. The mountains in the east are shrouded with forest fire smoke. In the west, the jagged skyline of Grand Teton (13,766 feet) towers over Jackson Lake and looks flat and ethereal, as though cut out of light blue construction paper and pasted as a backdrop in the sky. Mt. Washburn and Specimen Ridge, gateposts for the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, are visible beyond the flat expanses of Yellowstone Lake and the Hayden Valley. To the south lies the sheer cliff of razor-edged Soda Mountain and the Soda Fork valley in front of it, tomorrow’s destination.
The beauty of being up here is you can see where you came from and where you are going. It’s like running your eyes instead of your fingertips over a huge relief map.
We watch the sun go down in the evening, and because we are high and in the open, we are all up early enough the next morning to see it come up on the opposite side of the plateau.
Down off the side of the plateau lies a very special place called “The Parting of the Waters,” where the grandness of the thing rattles us and fills us with wonder. The Blackfoot Indians of Montana called the Continental Divide “The Center of the World.” It is the central point not just for North America, but South America as well, for it splits the river systems of two continents from the Bering Sea to the tip of Patagonia. No other divide separates drainages in such continental proportions, sending rivers not only in two different directions, but to two different oceans.
And here, at Two Ocean Creek, a small stream so gentle and friendly you can ford it by merely rock-hopping with your boots still on, you can actually see the Divide at work. A small spit of land, a tiny tongue of a peninsula, big enough for only a few people to stand on, rises up from the creek, pushing up the land, splitting the stream in two. One tiny tributary goes off to the Pacific Ocean, 1,353 miles away, while the other, Atlantic Creek, must roll 3,488 miles before reaching its resting spot in the Atlantic Ocean.
I toss in a stick and it heads towards the Atlantic, and I send along a silent prayer to our loved ones on the East Coast. We stand in the creek, straddling the tiny peninsula, the water pouring over our left foot going home, the water over our right to California.
Upper Brooks Lake, a gorgeous blue eye of the earth, is just the kind of place to spend the last night of a long journey. You’d expect it to be crawling with boaters, campers and fishermen — and it would be, if it were close to a road. But the area is wild, and we have it all to ourselves. After our last trail dinner, my kids lead me through the laurel thicket maze, down to the high grasses by the lake. We lie on our backs in each other’s arms, watching the clouds race by overhead. “Tomorrow we head home,” I announce.
“This is home,” replies Sierra. Her response takes me by surprise, for although I know our children really enjoy the wilderness, children of this age equate home with comfort and security. We adults aren’t much different.
No place feels like home if you just observe it from a scenic overlook. You must live in it. You have to immerse yourself in the bugling elk, the refreshing streams, the sunrises and sunsets.
Then living with the Tetons makes them yours.
———-
The author of this story, Cindy Ross, has co-written, with Todd Gladfelter, a general hiking information and how-to guide, “A Hiker’s Companion” (Mountaineers Books; $12.95), as well as a book on hiking and camping with kids, “Kids in the Wild” (Mountaineers Books; $12.95).
IF YOU GO
– GETTING THERE
The Teton Wilderness is just south of Yellowstone. Nearest airports: Cody or Jackson, Wyo.
– THE BASICS
Permits are not required, but along with no-trace camping you must follow regulations including proper food storage (the Tetons are home to both black and grizzly bears). Exercise extreme caution when fording rivers. Carry equipment and clothing necessary for winter temps because it can snow any day of the year.
– LLAMA TRIPS
Contact Jackson Hole Llamas, which leads guided pack trips onto the west slope of the Tetons in the Targhee National Forest. Contact: Jackson Hole Llamas, Box 12500, Jackson, Wyo. 83001; 800-830-7316.
Rendezvous Llamas of Jackson leases and rents llamas ($35-$45 per day, per llama), enabling you, after a seminar, to take them into the area you desire. Contact: Rendezvous Llamas, Box 8459, Jackson, Wyo. 83002-8459.
– INFORMATION
Maps and guidebooks: Forest visitor maps can be purchased from Bridger-Teton National Forest, Attn. Information Desk, Box 1888, Jackson, Wyo. 83001. USGS Quad maps of the Teton Wilderness can be ordered through Bridger-Teton NF or the U.S. Geological Survey, Box 25286, Denver Federal Center, Denver, Colo. 80225.
“Guide to the Continental Divide Trail, Volume 3: Wyoming” ($12.95 postpaid) and the 1993 supplement ($9.50 postpaid) by Jim Wolf can be purchased through the Continental Divide Trail Society, 3704 N. Charles St. (No. 601), Baltimore, Md. 21218; 410-235-9610. Map-Paks are also available.
Further information: Blackrock Ranger Station, Buffalo Ranger District, Box 278, Moran, Wyo. 83013; 307-543-2386.
