Driving out of the Grand Teton National Park for the last time, hints of blue peek out from the gray skies. We make a stop at Mormon Row before heading out of Jackson and onward to WY22. It is spitting rain and very cold. An “Avalanche Control” sign greets us as Van Diesel climbs the switchbacks up over 8000 feet of rugged mountainous terrain. Traveling the twisty, treacherous roads from Wilson Wyoming to Victor Idaho, through the Targhee National Forest, Francesca is driving and I am on the look-out for animals. “I see a moose statue” I cry out. “What? Are you sure it’s not a real moose?” asks Francesca. I shake my head, “It can’t be. It’s all one color and it didn’t move.” A few miles roll past and Francesca adds, “Maybe it’s was scared and froze. Why would anyone put a moose statue in the middle of nowhere?”. Hmmm…. All good points. A few turns on the highway and the mystery is solved. A dead moose on the side of the road confirms it. It is all black like the moose “statue”. Note to self, moose are not always accompanied by friendly squirrels and are also statue-like.
After a topsy, turvy drive, we are in Idaho now. I have never been through this potato-y landscape before. While passing Pine Creek Basin, the rain is falling heavily and steadily. The creek is swollen and silty. A few short miles later, we enter Swan Valley. Settled in 1879, this area has well manicured ranches, horses and cattle. The sun splashes here and evaporates just as quickly as rain clouds start to dominate the sky again. Miles later, we drive through the southern fork of the Snake River, I see a solitary deer in the middle of the river. It is an odd sight as deer are herd animals and there were no other deer nearby. Oddly, there are signs for “Game Crossing”. In other states, deer are just considered wildlife but here, they are just game.
There are miles and miles of fallow land with evenly spaced furrow lines in the earth. Alternating rows of a rich brown and bright green co-existing. Waiting for the next planting, the next crop to emerge, this land is in the process of becoming. The linear patterns on the ground intersect with the movement of the rolling hills and on the horizon is a long line of low hanging gray clouds as far as the eye can see. Then quite unexpectedly, I see a wide, zig-zag continuous line - a long trough of disturbed earth. These rip scars on the land are several feet deep. It as if some large trowel or earthquake created a massive fissure. The rich dirt now exposing long, white roots to the air. This is a lonely and sometimes, beautiful landscape.
We drive by a house with an assortment of flags: an American, a Trump, a “Let’s Go Brandon”, and one with Benjamin Franklin. The first two flags I understand. “Let’s Go Brandon” is a meme for “F—- Joe Biden”. But the flag with Franklin perplexed me. In a word association game, I think Franklin and electricity. But apparently, others think of a Franklin political cartoon created hundreds of years ago “Join or Die”. In other words, you are with me, or you can die. Put another way, it is the “my way or the highway” thinking that divides so much of this land of promise. Pitting us versus them when there’s only us. And while we are busy bickering, the mega-millionaire puppet masters live lives unfettered by a conscience and uncontrolled by society. At our very worst, people are hyena-like pack animals. A few miles later, we come across Massacre Rock State Park where emigrants once slaughtered one another. There is a park to commemorate a massacre. Imagine, if we had a garden wherever there was a mass shooting. Parks would number in the 1000s.
The wind has whipped up and not too far from Not Soo Pah (yes, that’s the name of a real place), rain starts pelting the landscape on both sides of us. But as we drive along the country road, the pavement is dry and gray and the warm sun shines a path forward but is just out of reach. On US 93N it is raining and the two storms have merged. Just as we enter Jackpot Nevada, there is a sign “Report Shootings from Highway”. If the situation was different, I would have found that sign more worrisome than I did. But right then, we had more pressing matters. Wind, rain, a two lane highway where the speed limit is 75 mph and Nevada is a Voldemort 6. Thankfully, Francesca is capably driving this perilous stretch which lasts for more than 50 miles. If that wasn’t worrisome enough, it is at this time that I discovered my long sleeved shirt is inside out and I’ve been wearing it backwards.