A quick talk to the new-school locals who are resettling Jackson, Wyoming, from someone who never was a local but probably should be

June 25, 2010


You can go ahead and talk about how you’ve moved to Jackson, how you’ve done well in life and can now afford a stately 500k home in the ghetto part of town, how you brave the traffic and float your kayak down the Snake and how, sometimes, you run into Teton Village for dinner at some restaurant that just opened.

Something Thai, I’m sure. Something expensive and trendy.

Go ahead. I know I’ve never formally lived in the Jackson Hole area. I’ve never called it home, and that nowadays I only visit every four years and barely have any family connection in the town. Even my grandma had to ditch the place. Probably the fault of people like you. I’ll pin that you y’all, if you don’t mind.

Here’s the thing. I might not be from Jackson, but I’m fiercely protective of it. That Thai restaurant wasn’t here when I wandered its streets every summer for years. Teton Village was just a tiny little ski resort. Jackson was still overrun by cowboys, not Subarus; ranchers, not transplants.

Maybe you’ve got your own personal Jackson – some place you’ve never lived but still stick to, allowed to become a part of your soul, of which you shun visitors and push away the people who just don’t get it. That’s it, right?

They just don’t get it, do they?

Jackson isn’t my home. It never has been. Still, I consider myself a local – thanks to generations of family and history and a bunch of my own experiences – and I’ll be damned if I’m going to feel guilty about it.

Sorry, man. I know you just moved here.

But unless you’re new place has some way to replicate three decades of tradition and sheer force of connection, you’ll never be a local.

At least not in my eyes. Not in my experience.

Not to THIS local-who-never-was.

Tags: Family, Grandpa Boyer, Home, Travel, Vilhauer |

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Aunt Katherine

June 15, 2010


So you’ve got this valley, where all of your great aunts and normal aunts and even your mom grew up, and the family is so entrenched in the culture that there’s nothing that could pull them away. Even when they ARE pulled away, they’re still there.

You’ve got your grandmother, who was the youngest of what seems like dozens, and you’ve got the log cabin they grew up in, and you’ve got the mountains they always looked at, every morning, EVERY morning, yet they never got sick of them, and you’ve got an entire legion of cousins and second cousins and they’re all still there. They’re all still holding tight. They’re all still representing the homeland and keeping it real.

You’ve got Great Grandma Johnston. She is barely a distant memory, but you remember the time you didn’t want to kiss her goodbye and you remember that it wasn’t long after that she died and how it’s taken you over two decades to understand that there’s no need to feel guilty. You were just a kid – a kid who was a little afraid of the super old.

And you’ve got Great Aunt Katherine. 93 years old. Your grandmother’s oldest sister. Another mother, really.

The mountains are turning brown and the pass is nearly at its safest, but traveling from city to city in western Wyoming is dangerous for your family, your memories constantly bumping up against your vehicle, too many to stop and consider and, so, you veer right and hit the pedal and dive through the barrage.

Sometimes you miss things. And sometimes, you have to let them go.

Because, after 93 years, your grandmother’s oldest sister took stock of her life, of those memories and that valley and all of those sisters and that log cabin and then considered the connections she’s made and said, “You know, that’s probably about as good as I could have hoped for.”

You might not know how it happened. In fact, you’re not surprised at all. All you know is that a keystone of the family has passed. You were close enough to feel the memories bounce off of the windshield, landing safely, looking as we passed, and understanding that we were on our way to meet family, and that there would be more chances in the future to reconnect.

With the rest of the family around. Somewhere a little more dignified.

Godspeed, Aunt Katherine. I never knew you as well as I could have. But, then again, maybe I did.

Tags: Family, Travel |

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St. Cloud, via Garrison

June 11, 2010


Garrison speaks on my college town.

“The eastern approach to Lake Wobegon is Division Street, St. Cloud, a five-mile strip of commerce in full riot, the fast-food discount multiplex warehouse cosmos adrift in its asphalt sea, the no-man’s-land of twenty-four-hour gas stations that sell groceries and have copiers and the bright plastic restaurants where, if you ate lunch there for the rest of your life, you would never meet anybody you know or get to know anybody you meet, a tumult of architecture so cheap and gaudy and chaotic you wonder how many motorists in search of a drugstore and a bottle of aspirin wound up piling into a light pole, disoriented by flashing lights and signage and sheer free enterprise, and then the cosmos peters out and you emerge from hell and come into paradise, rural Minnesota.”
-“In Search of Lake Wobegon” – Garrison Keillor

I hold St. Cloud fondly in my heart. I love the town. I went to school, made lifelong friends and began a career in St. Cloud. And, without fail, I take an extra hour out of my day and pass through whenever I’m on my way to Minneapolis.

But, man. I’ve been there recently. And nothing has changed from this quote.

Tags: Travel |

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Back to the grid, missing the valley

June 8, 2010


Though I’ve only been away for four days, I still miss the West. So much it hurts.

Something about the simplicity, about brush filling in the prairie gaps between mountains, about rivers that go on forever, about altitude changes that form sawtoothed horizons. Where every fence is wooden. Every bagel shop generous. Every tourist in awe, and every resident following suit.

For me, it’s the Jackson Hole area. For others, it might be the northwest. New York City. The lake district in England, or the hills of Tuscany. An area that invites painful longing; that we experience but never own, our vacations and trips merely a rental of the area, backed by deposits, contracted to be returned unscathed.

We need these areas. Not because we enjoy being someplace we’re not, but because it puts our homes in perspective.

I love northwest Wyoming – it’s the area my family settled, and the area where I spent my summers. Take away all of my ties, and I might be there in a second. Take away my family, my job, my friends, my opportunities, and I’d move to the valley in a second.

But those things are what make Sioux Falls so good.

Those things make this home.

Jackson Hole is no home. And while I still long to be back there, helping my grandmother with the lawn and staring down the Snake River, I know that it offers nothing of what good ol’ Sioux Falls does.

The valley holds my desires. The prairie holds my life.

Tags: The Roads Oft Traveled, Travel, Vilhauer |

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Devils Tower on the horizon

May 25, 2010


Devil's Tower (c)AAA

There’s a stretch of Interstate 90 – near the Wyoming/South Dakota border – where, on a clear day, you can see Devils Tower on the horizon.

When I was young, we’d drive past it in the early morning on the way home; our trip from Jackson Hole to Sioux Falls always included a break for the night in nearby Gillette.

It looks no bigger than a thimble. But there it is. Just a few miles away, promising something fantastic – that is, if you’re willing to veer off track and head in a different direction.

There’s a lesson there, I guess. About the limitless potential of traveling the nation’s Interstates. Or about following your dreams.

Whichever works for you this morning.

Tags: Career, On..., Travel, Vilhauer |

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Tate Gallery by Tube

February 5, 2010


Tate Gallery by Tube

It seems as if once very six months I find myself longing for this print, wondering why I haven’t just bucked up and bought it, and it seems also, once every six months, I fight back the urge with the simple realization that, in fact, even if I were to buy it, I have nowhere to put it.

That being said, nothing warms my cockles more than London Underground poster art.

Tags: Travel |

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I know what you did last summer (because you told me your location at all times on Twitter)

February 1, 2010


I was in both St. Cloud and Minneapolis this weekend. Most of you didn’t know that. On purpose. Because I don’t tweet my location. On purpose. But man, it can be hard to hold it back.

See, I know everyone’s jumping on the FourSquare bandwagon, just like everyone jumped on the BrightKite bandwagon, just like everyone will jump on the LocalJump or Designatr or MyPlacez bandwagon when those unfortunately named start-ups finally start up. I get it. People can connect. “Oh, you’re there? Well, I’m here. Let’s hang, dawg.”

And, I’ll admit. While I haven’t decided that location-based social networking is valuable or necessary or wise for myself, I have signed up for both FourSquare and BrightKite. (I had to. There’s a username involved, and I wanted to collect mine.)

That being said, I won’t use them. It’s already enough that I constantly give out my thoughts and my motivations and my activities; I simply don’t feel right doing all of this and tagging it with my EXACT LOCATION AT THIS EXACT MOMENT.

There was a point in which my own safety and the safety of my family (who may or may not be with me when my location is given off) outweighed my need to relay yet another part of my life. It can get hard – after all, two years of constant lifestreaming can develop a habit, leaving me mindlessly exclaiming, “OH MAN I’M IN ST. CLOUD AND DIVISION STREET STILL SUCKS!”

When, in fact, what I’m saying in that case is, “OH MAN I’M IN ST. CLOUD AND MY FAMILY IS HOME ALONE SO NOW YOU KNOW!”

And that’s why I don’t BrightKite or FourSquare or WhateverWhatever. Because, as Aaron said a few years back, “I think we got caught up in the excitement of lifestreaming and forgot to really think about who might be following those streams. Maybe some of those people are crazies.”

Tags: Technology, Travel |

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