TETONS
South of Yellowstone, along Wyoming’s Wind River, is Jackson Lake, a large, high-altitude body of water located in the Grand Teton National Park. Peaks of some 12,000 feet rise from the lake. We were hungry, too hungry to notice a severe thunderstorm rolling in, so we silenced our groaning stomachs with chicken sandwiches and mint chocolate chip ice-cream at a restaurant. With a route mapped out and bellies finally full (both rare occurrences on the road), we found camp and decided a swim would complete the evening. Less than a mile from our hammock site was a small, mosquito-infested trail that led to the lake’s edge. On it, we were greeted by a female elk seeking shelter from the approaching storm, which we still hadn’t noticed. The timing could not have been more exact—the moment our toes touched the water, the rain came pouring in. In defiance of the wisdom our mothers had tried to instill in us since we were boys, we dove in, basking in our decision. I’ve seen a lot of the beautiful country we live in, and I’ve experienced moments I thought were miracles, but I’ve never had a moment as truly epic as this one: heavy raindrops falling from parting clouds, leaving holes in the lake’s surface while the golden sun says “good evening” before dipping behind massive peaks. These beautiful sights in unison created the closest thing to heaven any of us had experienced in our twenty-some years of life. Swimming out to a buoy several hundred feet from shore, I was certain Nessie was going to snatch me by my toes, but I still wanted to go farther out into the lake. The following morning, we decided to take a boat out for a few hours. To all of our surprise, the boating center trusted a rented pontoon to us four hooligans, so we dove, swam, horsed around, drank soda, and told ourselves, “We’ll definitely be back to do this again.”
