The Misplaced Mountains

The Tetons are astounding if only because they can be right there, and you may not see them.


They aren't huge mountains, especially if you're used to the Fourteeners in Colorado. The difference is, you can be right next to them, as they slink through the trees, playing with light and shadow and mounds of rock and mud to pretend they aren't really there. But the trees clear for an instant, and the shoulder falls away, and there they are, throbbing awkwardly in the sky above the snowy plains, alone.


The Tetons are freak mountains, lost mountains, misplaced mountains, a skeletal spine of sullen granite that grew roots amidst the emptiness of the Wyoming plains.


You climb the top of a mountain in Colorado and you see empty mountains, an endless cacophony of serrated edges and invisible depths and parasitic mines and rich white Americans looking to conquer them all. But you climb on top of Grand Teton, and you see what you have been seeing on the entire drive across Wyoming... more flat, dusty, boundless Wyoming.