My Experience in Wyoming

I’m publishing this story several weeks after my return, but it was written mostly in first person. I hope you enjoy!

I feel compelled to convey my packing strategy for a trip because, I think everyone has pride when it comes to their own personal packing style, and I am no different. My concept of object permanence is not great. Basically, if I can’t see it, I forget it, so I like to lay everything out where I can see it all at once. It’s very satisfying to have all the necessary objects for adventure before me like a Queen admiring her armies, and then to see them disappear into there perfectly shaped receptacles gives me great joy.

I used to pack for adventure the same way when I was a kid, only I was packing for sudden and unexpected trips through magic portals in the delicate fabric of spacetime. What I know now is that magic portal journey’s through spacetime happen pretty regularly, and they make me nauseous.

I love the excitement of going to an airport. I mean it’s got portal in the name! And you do time travel; I fell asleep in Atlanta and woke up in Salt Lake City two hours before I got there. However, my body does not like the cramped seating, the uncertainty of timing, the terrible food, and the constantly wobbly horizon line. So, in the picture where you see me safely landed in Jackson Hole, with the beautiful mountains in the background, clutching my purse and straining to smile, is because I have just survived three flights, two stopovers, and sixteen hours of nearly vomiting.

I am so happy to be in Jackson Hole! It feels like home the moment I land. There are sculptures made of antlers everywhere and the walls are covered in animal art. Just like my apartment!

For the next segment of the journey, I must, of course obtain a noble steed. I had pre-booked a regular steed of no known noble nature. In fact, I asked for the cheapest steed. I would have been happy with any old steed they had lying around.

What I ended up with was magnificent. The steed guy said we don’t have any shitty steeds left, so he had to upgrade me to a noble steed, and which steed would I prefer, the Unicorn or the Pegasus? I was like, I don’t know, this is tough, Unicorns are awesome, but Pegasus can fly. So, he tried to talk up the Pegasus, because, it’s what he would choose. And I agreed, the Pegasus is great, gimmie that, but I’m still thinking (Just to remind you, one minute ago I was choosing between cheap and shitty and now I’m humming over Unicorns..) Anyway, at the last minute I changed my mind and chose the Unicorn.

I’ve been waiting my whole life to ride a Unicorn; I’m not missing my chance now. And he gives me the keys to a dark green 2023 Jeep pickup, and it is truly the greatest vehicle I have ever driven. The End.

That could easily be a great ending to all the effort I put into getting to Jackson, just that truck. She drove around and had a great time, the end.

I just had to add one more of the truck. I know, I’m in the way of you seeing the whole trucks beauty, but I needed to prove I was actually there.

However, is the wrong way to start a paragraph, I’m aware, but I’m a rule breaker. However, as I was saying any single focus, protagonist led, journal type, hero story must go. We have certainly crossed the threshold, definitely gained magical assistance, and now we enter the belly of the whale.

The National Museum of Wildlife, and I’m visiting not only because it is an amazing attraction, but also because they house my work in the permanent collection! Of which I am extremely proud.

As a reward I have been given free entry, and a meeting with the illustrious Michelle Dickson. My liaison to the Museum and the director of Event Management. Michelle has been extremely kind to me over the years and I have participated in several fundraisers for the NMW, with one on the horizon in September.

I sit along side some of the most amazing wildlife artists on the continent, my newest discovery being Robert Kuhn. I know he’s not a new artist, but he’s new to me, and I’m a big fan. I ate up every piece I could find of his. These are just a couple of examples I thought would translate well to photography. You really have to stand in front of them to understand the genius, but I’ll try and describe what I think is great about his work and maybe it will give you a taste.

His use of line and the movement in his brushstrokes is particularly exciting to me. If you zoom in you can see that he’s using a huge variation of brush widths, from pencil to what I would guess is about a 2” wide brush. It’s clear he’s also using a palette knife for mark making. All of these different tools add to the excitement of the lines and illuminate his mastery. The student uses many of the same line to find the truth. The true master uses the exact tool to find the exact shape or line to express an image. The more specific the mark, the greater the master.

Kuhn is a true master; his placement of shape and colour seems effortless. I guess it’s not surprising I’m a fan; he ticks all my boxes! The anatomy and structure of form is flawless, while his brushstrokes are loose and exciting, and the backgrounds are simple verging on abstract.

It must be a reversion to childhood, but I wanted to lick the paintings. I didn’t actually want to lick them; they would probably just taste like dust and varnish and be really bad for my health. I like them the way my baby niece wants to put keys in her mouth.

My other delicious discovery was Richard Loffler, an amazing sculptor and fellow Canadian. Richard makes the most epic animal sculptures of Bison. Seeing as they are one of the animals I hope to capture while I’m out here it was a good omen.

I spent the next few days, lugging my giant camera around the Grand Teton Mountains, hoping to make some unassuming animals famous. As an aside Teton is pronounced Tea Ton, like a ton of tea. I was corrected multiple times by locals, now you and I both can say Teton like a pro.

The Teton Mountains were not what I went to see, I hadn’t even heard of them and when I was told about them, I disregarded the information as inconsequential. I was only interested in Yellowstone National Park. The famous park that I had read about before hand. The park that had so much success with the wolf reintroduction programme. The park with the loyal geezer, I mean geyser. The park with the bison and bear and amazing yellow stones!

What I came away with was a true appreciation for the Tetons. It’s a spectacular park, and I enjoyed it almost more than Yellowstone. I captured several great moose pics and a ton of friendly marmots.

Pro tip, if you are going into nature to capture pictures of wild animals, figure out how to use your camera’s settings in advance of your trip. Otherwise, you may become frustrated by the quality of the images you take when an awesome animal crosses your path and you snap a million pictures perfectly framed, but every one of them blurry. This would never happen to me as I always think ahead, and I’m a great photographer and totally understand how my heavy machinery works.

This is of course sarcasm, and this definitely happened to me and I still have no idea how my camera works. It looks cool though, and I intimidate other photographers while I carry it because the lens is so impressive.

Just for those who now see me as totally pathetic, it’s not entirely true, I do have a rough idea how things work, and I can watch youtube as well as the next woman. However, I am not at all proud, and if any genuinely skilled photographers want to help me understand why even though I’ve set my canon 7d to ai servo and am using a relatively fast lens, 70-200 f2.8 with a 1.4x teleconverter, I’m still getting super grainy shots, I’d love to chit chat.

As an injured woman of middling years, I no longer have the ability to run up mountains for 16 hours a day one after the next. In an effort to keep active and continue to enjoy the landscape I spent the day attempting to reach the granite hot springs just outside the town of Hoback. I want to say more about the name Hoback, but I think you can make your own jokes. It’s actually a gorgeous little place outside Jackson cut through by the snake river. The whole countryside is apparently riddled with hot springs and I spent about 2 hours on the road getting to granite. An hour of which was on a mangled dirt road peppered with signs that read “Bears are Dangerous”, and “Stay in your Car”. Either the ominous road is meant to keep away tourists or the people of Wyoming are way tougher than anyone I know. There were people camping everywhere, as well as really relaxed cattle all over the road. I had to wait as a cow nursed about 5 calves in the center of the street.

I have to impress on you how quickly it becomes super remote. At the end of the road are the hot springs, which are in a sort of pool on the side of the mountain where they’ve directed the warm water to flow through. There is literally nothing else around, just a hut where they take your money and an outhouse. There is no cell service. It is gorgeous. There are these exposed crumbling rockfaces all around and a merrily flowing river and an enticing trail through the mountains. Of course, you take that trail, because you think to yourself, you think: “I’m going to have a little hike and take it easy, but still stretch my legs after a drive and feel like I’ve earned the soak in a pool.” Out you go and again you pass ominous signage declaring the very real danger of bears and to make sure you have bear spray. Even though the exceptionally kind woman at the hot springs hut has assured you that bears won’t bother you if you just sing a song or talk loudly. You still maybe feel a little unsafe. Maybe you sing loudly for about 40 minutes of walking and you forget your fear until you’ve found yourself in the middle of a canyon which was obviously created by a rock slide. You’re surrounded by giant boulders all stacked on top of each other and you become quiet for a moment to enjoy the view. There’s an eagle! And you try and take a picture, but it’s to far for your camera so you just sit and enjoy. And then sounds become very loud in your ears, “what was that!” It was probably a squirrel, but it dawns on you how very exposed you are alone at the bottom of a canyon and how yummy you must look. So, you quicky make your way back the way you came gradually increasing your speed until bursting out of the bushes next to a sign reading “In bear country, don’t run!” Just for an example of an experience someone might have. I had a great old soak in the hot springs and soothed my sore muscles before almost being late to the music festival.

The Teton Music Festival was amazing, I was lucky enough to be able to witness Sir Donald Runnicles the famous Scottish composer and the festival orchestra perform Beethoven, Bruch and Mendelssohn. I hadn’t been to the symphony in a long time, and I was reminded how spectacular it is to see a live performance of musicians who are such experts at their craft. I’m as moved by the music itself as I am by the performances of the individual musicians. The concept of concert is so foreign to me as a visual artist who works alone. I love to experience the individuality of the musicians in person, where you get to witness their athletic feats of creativity as pieces of the whole.

The music was a lovely prelude to the main event for me, and the reason for my trip, the opening at Diehl Gallery.

If you’re a follower of Joseph Campbells works and theories around myth you would have already picked up on some of my references to his work. He found links and comparisons between myths across cultures to formulate an overarching narrative theme he coins as the ‘Monomyth’. The Monomyth has been famously used as a guide in such current classics as ‘The Matrix’, and ‘Star Wars’, which both follow the 12 steps from the hero’s call through to the return to the ordinary world.

The beauty of the Monomyth is its universality, it can be applied at any stage in a person’s life and elucidate meaning. In my journey to a world foreign to my particular experience I am at the apex of the cycle, the moment the hero gains the greatest insight and faces the largest challenge.

It truly feels like a meeting with the Goddess, not that my agent is a goddess. Well, she is kind of, Mariam Diehl is a tall slender woman with impeccable taste and forceful competence. Like she’s a Jedi and the Force is with her. She put on an amazing event and I am truly grateful the universe saw fit to put me in her path. As Uncle Iroh says in ‘Avatar the Last Airbender’ "While it is always best to believe in oneself, a little help from others can be a great blessing." Mariam has always had faith in my work and her confidence has been a boost to my own self confidence. As well as sales, shows, and a boost in my career of course.

I love standing in front of my work. It’s the view at the top of the mountain. The reward for all the struggle. I get to share my work with others and see their enjoyment of the hours of toil and fear. I don’t know if people know this, but making art comes with a lot of failure. You fail and you fail and you fail again until you find something that succeeds. Presenting a show regardless of the reception is a success in itself. I’ve been very fortunate in my career to have excellent reception of my work and it makes all the failure worth while, because it feels like the path has meaning.

As much as I love looking at my own work, that may sound smug, but I mean who doesn’t feel satisfaction at a job well done? My favorite is looking at people looking at my work. It’s a bit like Amelie looking back at people in the theatre while watching a movie. It gives me a real sense of reverence when I see people appreciating my work the way I appreciate the work that I love. It’s so much better than a like on Instagram, sorry Instagram, but you can never compare to the sensation of being in a common space with other people for a common purpose. Particularly if that common purpose is me.

The Fete was the best thing that happened. Everyone was so nice and we drank wine and there was a band, and it was catered! I loved it. Mariam’s staff was great, Chad and Isabelle and Mindy all took care of me, and helped me to be less nervous and talk to all the people. I think I’d like to do more of these event’s where someone else does all the work and I get to show up and look great and get a lot of attention.

Now that I’ve pulled the sword from the stone, rescued the maiden, and discovered the elixir the rest is gravy. I can take my noble stead to check out the fabled Yellowstone National Park!

Only having time to see so much I themed my sightseeing choices based on the artist named attractions. I discovered ‘The Artist Point’ in the ‘Grand Canyon of Yellowstone’, I found the ‘Artist Paint Pots’ in the Sulphur pools and I witnessed ‘Old Faithful’s’ discharge.

I feel the white Jeep photo should need no explanation, Shadowfax. My brother gets it. And my Jeep has a huge crush on that Jeep.

On my last day I discovered that Jackson Hole is actually 7000 feet above sea level, and where I live in Toronto is only 250 feet above sea level. Apparently, some people actually experience altitude sickness visiting the town. Because I didn’t know about the phenomenon, I hiked up a mountain on my first day. A trail the locals all use for exercise called Josie’s ridge. It took me an hour and a half, and I was sweating and panting and telling myself how out of shape I was while other people ran past me up the switch back. Now I wasn’t too hard on myself, it’s about 1000 feet to the top from the start of the trail and about 2km or 1.2 miles of distance. The incline is severe enough to require a switchback. There were moments where I swear to god I was going to fall backwards off the mountain. After making it to the top carrying a liter of water snacks and a giant camera I felt exhausted but exhilarated. The way down was so much harder because my muscles weren’t working properly. I now know they were struggling for oxygen, but at the time I thought my legs were going to fall off they were shaking so bad. I did the same hike again on the 13th day of my trip, made it to the top in 45 minutes and jogged down the mountain with little to no shake in my legs.

I felt like I just escaped with the golden fleece. Apart from the opening the greatest gift was feeling rock solid in my body again.