My rapture with the image of The Tetons reflected in Jenny Lake became three-dimensional when I hiked with a pal Chris, up and around and back down — the Peak of Grand Teton. 

Chris and I were at the end of a year-plus trail of experimental “life style.” Our little band of communards had just broken up when we set out on our “Hike.” We’d driven all the way from Cape Cod. We were to rendezvous with the others in the Tetons but checking in by phone to make final the meet-up itinerary…“We’re not coming…” long empty hiss then    silence.

It was a moment on the life journey when the trajectory shifts. Abruptly. The hopes for a future filled with a happily-ever-after commune had been dashed. Happily living on the land, living a life off the grid, at least off the grid enough to feel some separation from the detested world of eco-destruction and the soul-numbing fog of advertising. It was wishful thinking…that we could solve the world’s problems, with lifestyle alone. In grad school for sculpture I had minored at the AG school in vegetable production working on my merit badge for self-sufficiency. On Cape Cod, where we had rented a big house to fit us all, I learned the rudiments of old-time construction, specializing in post and beam barn raising. I was ready for the “New Age”, my new age anyway. My tool kit ready. 

We didn’t know it, but you could (kinda) have felt it. The Aquarian “Wave” had crested. Ten million dollars worth of Huey helicopters were shoved off the flight deck of the USS Midway. Nixon was a month from resignation. Gas prices tripled overnight.

On our 3-day backpack trip, we would hike up to a lake behind the wall-like front of Grand Teton Mountain and back down Cascade Canyon. It was a moment for deciding, We vowed to ourselves the hike would decide if we would push on to the California Promised Land or go back East. It turned out to be a tricky trail both the journey west and the hike up the mountain. A psyche in its mid-twenties carries a lot of goof-ball enthusiasm slathered with hubris. Our bibliography included Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, The Strout Realty Catalogue, Be Here Now, and some volume or another in the Carlos Castaneda library of shamanic mysticism.  Journey to Ixtlan comes to mind. We ran into a couple of snowy impasses and then a rocky tooth where we had to haul our packs on ropes up and over. “Just don’t look down!” On the trail up, we saw one hapless chap, shouldered by his companions, cross-eyed and stumbling with the effects of a concussion from a bad tumble. 

On our first overnight on the mountain we were refreshed from the crushed travel in our VW counterculture conestoga, The hard hike got us charged-up; with that mini-triumph getting us to the backside of Teton Peak. The adventure getting us through the pass, kicked open the doors to a little Shangri-la. A series of alpine glacial lakes, aqua and milky from the ice grinding the native granite to powder, invited us to linger and lunch. Breathtaking breathtaking breathtaking, swim in ice-bound water, washed our disappointment at the dream differed, up into the cobalt sky.

It came unbidden, sitting there on the shoreline.The vision of ribboned gift boxes rising out of the lake, one after another. In school, I had counted on visions like this, and learned a secret or two for getting those hidden fish of the mind to rise hungry for chum, now here comes a year of carrying cement block and cutting 16” beams slapping the vision right out of you. A year of hard-labor blew my smokey visions into tatters. And now just like that, Ta Da ! A line of unending presents waiting to be opened… “just what I always wanted”… and going on forever…

In 1962 on a family car-trip west, I had seen in Jenny Lake the sublime scene of mountains reflected in still water which transformed into a riveting vision. The saw-tooth peaks doubled in the mirror of a lake became the toothy maws of two dogs, mouth to mouth. In school I had seen this vision transform to become an opening into another world. That ridge line, doubled in the lake, described, pretty well, a gateway into another world. The line, thin, like the cambium layer under the papery bark of a twig, or maybe the surface tension on water—the thinnest of lines separating one world from another.

Sitting by the mountain lake, in my mind’s eye, I saw a slip of writing hidden, in the first box landing opened lying at my feet. “Lake Santa at the Edge of Never…” This is what came to me… “Lake Santa at the Edge of Never…” Then the gift box rose up and lifted into the clear blue at 9,500 feet, followed by another and another, winding around Grand Teton Peak, floating off all the way to California—a cavalry of marching surprises gaily wrapped waiting to be opened.

It’s taken me some fifty years to figure out the depth of that Lake Santa experience. Fifty years of climbing up over around through various stones and rockfalls, and into caves, maybe, blocking my progress. It seems over coming obstacles is a kind of Pilates of the spirit, finding your way via the pictures in the mind, the core of the mind getting in shape…and… if impediments to progress are seen as strengthening, you can approach a wall, knowing it is there to help you—eventually you get to recognizing the mind as a self-generated personal trainer.

So to hold the mystery of the unseen, what you see when you close your eyes. So this very vision came to me, sometimes it seems pretty flimsy in its pretense, but somehow it holds tight to an alcove in my mind, explicated with this interpretive sign. So here we go, let’s journey to The Edge of Never.

First gift from Lake Santa

The fact of me drawing again is a tremendous gift. I’d had a twelve year layoff first, because I was too busy with the business of being impresario to other artists, busy enough to slow production of my own hand-made stuff to an ooze. And then, with increasing disability via a nerve disorder, I gave it up altogether. “Hey, Gramping, why are your hands are so wiggly?” It was OK, I had plenty of discards and abandoned scraps to arrange and rearrange to make my stories. “I don’t draw anymore.” was my motto and mantra and now, the first gift from Lake Santa comes the gift of me drawing again. This is not a great drawing, or maybe not even a good one, but the fact of it says to me, ”go ahead.” What a gift…for true.