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National Geographic : 1979 Jul
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Grand Teton AWinter's Tale By FRANCOIS LEYDET U NTO the utmost bound of the everlast ing hills. The Biblical phrase echoed in my inner ear while my eyes swept the Wyoming horizon: low hills far to the north; the forested flank of Shadow Mountain to the east; the dark flattened bulk of Blacktail Butte to the south; and over there to the west, utterly dominating the scene as much by their sheer drama as by their superior height, the Tetons. The full forty-mile sweep of the range was spread before me, ancient crystalline rocks encrusted with snow and ice, sparkling in the winter sun, steep-sided and sharp spired, surging skyward from the flat valley floor of Jackson Hole like a gigantic tidal wave suddenly halted and frozen an instant before it broke. Quintessential mountains, these Tetons. Lofty, majestic, haughty, hypnotic-I searched my vocabulary for descriptive adjectives. All fit, none sufficed. I stood knee-deep in virgin snow, the collar of my sheepskin jacket turned up against the Feb ruary wind that poured down from the crest - JaInMCIP nr apwI-It CRTr]lVl~irm ".n.. 4 VVTVII" Cody YLLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK Grand Teton ional Park 25 NATIONAL K REFUGE 0KM100 oMI Casp of the Tetons. I was out of sight and hearing of the main north-south highway through Grand Teton National Park. The only sound was the faint hiss of wind across the snow. I felt small, alone, and mortal; looking up at the Grand Teton, I could empathize with a Biblical shepherd who thought of less awe some heights as "everlasting hills." Still, I knew these Tetons were not ever lasting. Old they were in human terms they had soared there long before the first bands of men roamed the African savanna. Yet they were young as mountains go, less than nine million years old. And just as the child carries within him the seeds of his eventual demise, so were these upthrust masses of rock already marked with the processes of their dissolu tion: their canyon heads gouged by glaciers, their gneisses and schists scarred by frost and thaw and rain. From where I stood, I could see some of the glaciers, remnants of the Ice Age, perched on the sides of Grand Teton and Mount Moran. In the snow-mantled valley the Snake River flowed behind a screen of tall cottonwoods and dark spruces. Naked rock, ice, gravity, running water-the dra ma of erosion unfolded as imperceptibly as the sloughing off of dead cells from the skin of my hand. In an absolute sense the Grand Teton was no more everlasting than I. The mortality of mountains. The mortal ity of a man. Somewhere in between, on the cosmic timer, the mortality of a species. Before me, on a partly frozen backwater Some must die duringthe yearly migrationof elk from surroundinghigh country to the NationalElk Refuge near Grand Teton NationalPark. Here coyotes have stripped the carcass of a bull (right). Elk find some protectionfrom westerly winds under the lee of the Tetons (overleaf). But the snow is deep and forage scarce. 148
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