Living Outside of Expectations

Hamilton Stores, Inc., West Thumb Store #3,

Yellowstone National Park; Summer, 1976

Hamilton Stores, Inc., Old Faithful Store Yellowstone National Park; Summer, 1950

One of my Valdosta State University professors, Dr. Jane Zahner, has been teaching her Spring semester VSU online graduate course from Eger, Hungary while on exchange to Eszterhazy Karoly College. She has kept up a terrific (of course) blog of her experiences, both real and virtual, and I have eagerly followed her "off off campus". In imagining what it must be like for her to live and work in a different culture and to form close friendships with people who speak a different language, I was reminded of my own semester spent in an exotic and insulated culture, though not a foreign country.

I

In the summer of 1950 my father soda jerked in Yellowstone (YNP) at Ham's Old Faithful store. As a child I loved listening to tales of his coming of age summer and vowed to work there myself when I was old enough. In 1976, after my junior year at Auburn, I surprised my protective parents by finding my own Yellowstone soda fountain gig at West Thumb. They were more stunned when I followed through with my plans and actually flew from Columbus to West Yellowstone, changing planes four times: Columbus-Atlanta-Dallas-Denver-Jackson Hole-West Yellowstone.

My parents were not the only ones surprised by my boldness. A shy 21 year old, I definitely was not a risk-taker. I had never been west of Alabama and had never lived more than an hour from home or without a good friend in tow. When the plane circled Jackson Lake over the Tetons and landed beside a meadow of sagebrush, Lupine and Indian Paintbrush, I knew that I had found adventure, but I had no inkling of how transformative that adventure would prove to be.

Teton Wildflowers (M Moor, 2006)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mmoorr/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Yellowstone and neighboring Grand Tetons were the most exotic places I had ever seen.The mountains, incomprehensibly huge, dwarfed everything around them; the steam from boiling thermal hotpots, geysers, and springs created a fire and brimstone world around me. Besides the obvious landscape differences, the Wyoming weather at such high altitudes and northern latitudes was radically different from Georgia. I had traded stupor-inducing sultry Chattahoochee Valley weather (altitude - 300 ft.) for the invigorating, but thin, dry, and brisk Rocky Mountain air (7,733 ft.). We even had snow in June!

We savages -- the store clerks, cooks, soda jerks, and service station employees -- were college kids for the most part, but many retirees also worked for Hams.We came from all over the United States, and, though there were a handful of us from the South, most came from areas of the country definitely "not the South": the Midwest, Northeast, and West Coast. Along with different geographical histories, we had diverse cultural histories to match. From that group of about 50 employees, I remember an AWOL GI who gave a scary impromptu nunchuck and bowie knife demonstration, an 18 year-old girl who was tracked to the store by the FBI, an Up With People performer, fresh-faced nature enthusiasts, Asperger siblings who jousted in their Creative Anachronism Society costumes, Kathleen the tattooed lady (unheard of!), a holocaust survivor's daughter, more than a few divas, and LOTS of cute boys.

Many were amused by my accent and bemused by my college major (speech/language pathology). Some wondered aloud how anyone who sounded so funny could teach children to speak. A few of the less socially adept lectured me about racial prejudice in the South and laughed openly when they found out that I was a Southern Baptist, even warning me that I would witness card-playing, square-dancing, and drinking among the employees. We wore name tags with our first names and home states on our uniforms , prompting tourists to share their opinions about the South also. I quickly learned to deflect these perceived put-downs with a smile and a "yes m'am" or "thanks, y'all".

Despite those cultural biases, for the most part people who I met there had no expectations of who I was or how I should act. They, like me, realized the anonymity such a temporary alliance afforded. Suddenly, I had no reason to be shy, to feel inadequate, or to be self-conscious. If new acquaintances liked me, fine; if not, fine also - we'd most likely not meet again after August. Because of that, my two summers in the park were quite liberating and transformational experiences. I lost many self-imposed inhibitions, as well as some preconceptions about other cultures, gained self-confidence, and fell in love with the nicest guy from Boston. Leaving in August to return to Auburn for my senior year -- something that should have been exciting -- was heartbreaking. However, I had become a more mature and open person, willing to live life a little bit more on the edge than before and attempting to have fewer expectations of others. (During the next Yellowstone summer I met the love of my life on top of Mt. Washburn, so even the heartbreak was temporary.)

Thirty-three (!) years more mature, I wonder, if given a similar chance to live apart from the hyper-familiar -- language, culture, people, career, physical environment-- what my experience would be. I wonder if I would do as Dr. Zahner has done: grab the opportunity with both hands, saying "thank you, thank you!" I'd like to think that I would.

Teton Reflections from Moran Junction, '76

Top: Moran Junction and the Snake River, Tetons (Burd, 2005)
Middle: Ham and YPSS Employees Embark on Snake Whitewater Trip: June, 1976
Bottom: Moran Junction and the Snake River, Tetons (Luttrell, 1976)

During the summer of 1976, the nation's bicentenniel, I dipped ice cream, slung hotdogs, and made milkshakes as a soda jerk at Ham's Store #3 at West Thumb in Yellowstone. All private concessionaire employees worked hard for six days, but had one day off each week. Most of us resisted the urge to sleep in and took advantage of these rare free days to hike or explore the parks. In mid-June most tourists had not yet descended on the neighboring Grand Teton National Park, so the Whitewater concessionaires offered free trips to park employees. Our group loaded up someone's Falcon station wagon and headed down to the Snake River near Jackson to take advantage.

We had been watching the looming mountains grow taller as we rode south, but when we rounded a curve in the road at Moran Junction,we gasped a collective OH!. The Snake River spread before us; the perfectly calm water beneath the cloudless Montana blue sky mirrored the Tetons exactly. Our driver rolled to the road side for us to take pictures and to enjoy the moment. The picture posted here was taken by a family on a recent vacation, who later posted to their Web page. It's nice, but not nearly as nice as the one I took away in my head all those years ago.

Do-Overs

In 1976 when I was a Ham's Store soda jerk at West Thumb in Yellowstone, I took hundreds of pictures on my Kodak Pocket Instamatic 30 camera. Oh, for that opportunity today with a nice digital! This snapshot is a digitized copy of a 32 (!) year old print taken during that summer. I think that the photo would have been incredible with the right equipment. But then, so would most any picture taken at Yellowstone. (Take a look at a professional shot of the same area from a different angle, but at the same time of day.)

AH! I'm itching to go back, but not particularly wanting to go as the tourist I would be now. Hamilton Store number 3 is now a parking lot, and West Thumb dorms have been razed. In all probability, I would never leave the loop road to really explore the park areas where I camped and hiked back then. Some experiences just cannot be done over. (Side note: Gigapan offers a fantastic October view of the West Thumb basin with its steaming thermal features, snowy boardwalks, and even a glimpse of Lake Yellowstone in the background. Incredible!)

I do remember the morning that I took this photo. It was my one day off that week and, I remained at West Thumb, since I had no transportation. I simply walked out the front doors of the store and looked across Lake Yellowstone at the Absaroka Mountains. A family was crossing the boardwalk near the lake, silhouetted by the sun hitting the vapor wafting off the paint pots. Moments later another tourist on the boardwalk spooked a doe, who jumped right into one of the thermal pools. The doe sprang out and ran off. At the time I believed that she would be OK, but experience tells me that the doe probably died soon afterwards. I despised that tourist at the time. But was I, with my Pocket Instamatic, any better?

So many incidents in my life resemble living in Yellowstone, equipped with only a Pocket Instamatic: at every vantage point I have had amazing opportunities, filled with all sorts of possibilities, but without adequate reflection or planning, I, in my impulsivity, have managed to waste these gifts. Much of the time I am left both unsatisfied and completely frustrated with myself. Sometimes there are do-over opportunities, and sometimes there are none.

Being a parent is uniquely filled with opportunity for screw-ups that beg for a do-over. Fortunately, most of the time as a parent I have been afforded chances to repair my mistakes, just by the very forgiving nature of my children. Yesterday my daughter had her 23rd birthday and, as I always do especially on that anniversary, I thought of how proud I am of her and of what a delight she is to me. I know that I have adequately communicated those thoughts to her by my actions and words - not always consistently so, unquestionably - but certainly my mission has been to let her know without any doubt that I love her. No do-over necessary.

Relationships with friends and acquaintances are not so easily repaired. I have always thought of myself as awkward: stuck in that pre-teen gawky stage. I find myself saying the most ridiculous things and then trying to undo the damage. I'm afraid that it usually comes off more as an embarrassed mumbled half-sentence than an effective repair. I think that this is one reason why I enjoy blogging and online discussion groups so much. I have time to consider/reconsider my thoughts before I publish them. And...except for sent emails, I can always edit/delete! Wish I had a delete button for speech!