Dear Friends and Family,

How do you leave heaven?

I’m not asking rhetorically. Grand Teton is heaven.

I don’t mean “Grand Teton is like heaven.” I don’t mean “Grand Teton is heaven to me.” Simile is not enough; analogy is not enough. I mean “Grand Teton is heaven.”

I have been home in Virginia for just over two months now and I’ve had much time to wax philosophical about my travels and all the places, people, and experiences to which I bore witness. Friends and family (that is you, dear reader) have asked me often “what was the best part of your trip?” And for sake of fairness, I have lied a little, and said it was a three-way tie between Zion, Teton, and Glacier. Sometimes I have exaggerated and thrown in Yosemite, or Mesa Verde, or even San Francisco (sorry Georgia, Meredith; while I do love the City That Speaks for Itself, it doesn’t rise to the same level as Teton). These were lies.

These were small, delicate lies you can slip into believing by telling them so often. It was like a mnemonic device. “What is the most beautiful place you saw?” Zilwaukee Tutors Get You Moving Vans Super Fairly. You develop a tune, a soundalike, a simile for your lived experiences that you can hum and whistle without much mental effort. And you do it for sincere necessity, because when you’re carpooling out to a day hike in Shenandoah and you don’t really want to monopolize the conversation for the whole drive (even though you could!), you cannot summarize the infinities of the best 5 months of your life any more than Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally can sum up the whole of mathematics.

And even within those infinities, the happiness and joy and welcome I feel in Grand Teton, in Lake Solitude, is still infinite.

Yosemite makes the world feel big. Mesa Verde makes the world feel old, very old. Glacier makes the world feel overwhelming (in a very good way). San Francisco makes me feel known.

And Zion makes me feel like the world is my home.

Zion, you plush and beautiful boudoir, you make me feel like I’m waking up under soft, comfy covers on a cool spring morning. The sun is streaming in through the windows and I feel myself waking gradually, glowingly, as the sun slips in over the rooftops. The daze of sleep isn’t shaken off or alarmed away, it melts and evaporates and I feel so safe and content and so free from anxiety and I would stay in that way for a thousand years if I could. Oh Zion, you are as timeless to me as my own bed. Zion, in you, the world is my home.

But Teton, Lake Solitude,

Teton, you make me feel welcome in the world, my home. Teton, your slopes and still waters, you welcome me in like my best friend. I see your gentle breeze eddy and curl in the clouds over the mountaintops, and I see you whirl down the slope sides like my best friend racing down the stairs when they hear me ring the doorbell. The snows sparkle and glow with your eternal smile, ear-to-ear; the dust kicks up as you run out onto the lake! And you race and ripple over the mirroring waters coming closer, full tilt, skipping and leaping and bounding and you sweep me off my feet on the shore, you take me up in your arms and spin me and spin me and spin me, maple seed, around and around in the warmth and the comfort and the love of your embrace. We are laughing and we are crying and we are living and we are coming together for what feels like millennia in the making. And finally, you set me back down, still holding me close, and you say to me, with the cheer of every lived experience in your voice, and the sunlight of every life in your eyes, and the warmth of every gentle moment in your hand on my cheek, you say to me:

“I’m so glad you’re here, because I made this for you. Welcome home.”

Stay well everyone,

Evan 💙