Tetonia...

Outside of Rexburg we headed due east. The jagged peaks of the Tetons are pale thru the afternoon haze. I remember a question often asked by tourists when I lived here 30 years ago: “On what side of the range was the guy standing when he attached the name The Grand Teton to the tallest peak?” Living on the east side, in Jackson, I wondered why anyone would ask that, until I gazed from the Idaho perspective, the perfect pert lines from which it was so aptly named. Obviously a lonely time for French trappers then.

Anne’s cabins sit on six acres of flat grass land. Until she moved these 3 structures here there was nothing taller than a fence post. Sarah and I are sitting on the back porch of the original 100 year old log cabin, the first to be trucked to this site. She, on the swing knitting the perpetual black and yellow and pink and green blanket and me sitting on a stump typing away and drinking bourbon as the shadows lengthen across the brown grass and The Grand juts proudly in the distance above the foothills and Grand Targhee Ski Area. Herman is busy exploring under piles of wood, beneath an old sawed off pickup trailer, around a tractor tire and thru piles of discarded lamps, ice chests, rusted camp stoves, unidentifiable and unusable building material. Anne says we are going to make a dump run!

This cabin, the original, was an Mormon's homesteaders cabin. A single room, 16 x 18, it has newspaper and plaster for chinking and an old wood stove that has already caught the roof on fire once (while 8 outdoor friends of my sister were sleeping on any flat surface after a day of hard backcountry skiing). Next she poured a slab and moved a more contemporary two story cabin next to it. Cutting doors in the back of both structures she connected them with rough hewn logs to make a kitchen area. With propane cooking stove and refrigerator it is quite serviceable as long as you bring in water to fill the 55 gal. plastic barrel from Glory Bee Honey in Eugene and don’t mind tossing the 5 gallon bucket of gray water out the window. Until recently illumination was provided by candles and oil lamps but now she has a solar panel that powers music and lights. A composting toilet is tucked away in the bathroom. Efficient for #2 but everyone has to pee outside! A claw footed bathtub sits on cinder blocks. If you want to go to the trouble you can heat water on the stove and ladle it over you. The runoff collected in a tray underneath and, you guessed it, tossed outside.

Not able/willing to get rid of any of the stuff inherited from my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles both cabins are filled with antique tables, silver tea servers, and irreparable fine china. Pictures of ancestors cover a wall as collected art (some fine, some not so fine) hang everywhere. Despite obvious work and energy to prepare this place for us, a perpetual thin layer of dust coat most flat surfaces and flies gather to socialize around every window.