Mary Beth Baptiste - Altitude Adjustment: A Quest for Love, Home, and Meaning in the Tetons

Last night, as I was sleeping,

I dreamtmarvellous error!

that a spring was breaking

out in my heart.

I said: Along which secret aqueduct,

Oh water, are you coming to me,

water of a new life

that I have never drunk?

ANTONIO MACHADO(TRANSLATED BY ROBERT BLY)

August 1981. The odometer on the VW Rabbit rolls over 100,000 miles as we head north from Rock Springs on Wyoming Highway 89. A hundred desolate miles on a black highway. Herds of pronghorn antelope facing west. A tumultuous storm, a rainbow. A meander through Jackson as traffic crawls around a staged cowboy shoot-out in the town square. Stops at Freds Market for peanut butter and apples, the A&W for root beer and burgers.

We continue driving north, sniffing sharp, wet sage. Miriam reclines in the passengers seat, a Ms. magazine folded open to the No Comment page on her lap. Strands of her rain-straight hair flap out the window.

My heart drums, my mind burns luminous. Three days ago, when I first saw that haphazard rim of peaks beyond Denvers foothills, I knew I was home. Creeping up the Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, I embraced every mountain and stream, checking them off on the map like completed items on a to-do list.

Now, as we climb a curving hill past the National Fish Hatchery, Miriam bolts upright. Jeez-Lou-eez, will you look at that. Before us, smug with audacious power, the Teton range surges from the valley floor and the green-black forests, snagging cloud wisps as it rips through a meek cobalt sky.

From somewhere long forgotten the words Santa Barbara spring into my head. This is the saint my Portuguese grandmother invokes during storms. At the first turnout I park the car and leap out. My head swirls, blood charges through my veins, nerves prickle and blaze. I push and thrash, trying to tear through the dull dimensions of my current life and catapult into another. But it isnt time yet.

I want to sing, dance, run. I want to know it all. I want to sprint naked into the mountains, streak pine pitch through my hair, slip my fingers into rock crevices, slither-glide with trout over creek riffles. I want to sleep curled against a bears belly, its fur tickling my spine, and ride a moose through the forest like Lady Godiva. I want to scale the highest peak, splay out my arms, crack open my lungs in an all-out sacrificial scream: Im yours forever. I want to stand up there, feet rooted in silver rock, and touch the moon.

Promising a raw freedom previously unimaginable to me, the serrated peaks challenge me to take the risks that will bring purpose and depth to my humdrum suburban life. I belong here. But its bigger than me. Orders of magnitude bigger. Through my head flow the words of Aldo Leopold: A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. I strive to live this tenet. As a mountain woodswoman, I could.

The mountains are calling, wrote John Muir, and I must go. In a flash I see the irrepressible, gleaming kernel that Ive always both sought and avoided: For my life to matter, for me to do the work Im meant to do in the world, I have to spend my days in mountains and forests like these, among people committed to their flourishing.

And all they ask in return is a simple renunciation of everything Ive ever known to be true.