by Sara Flitner

My brother called from his ranch in eastern Oregon to catch up on my visit to the base of the Big Horns, where we grew up on the ranch now owned by our oldest brother. There are four of us siblings, with our older sister, and we share a code, indecipherable to others who don’t share a set of memories and experiences braided together like the bailing twine we’d pick up as kids. “I took the dogs out past where I begged you to let me sleep in the road after senior prom,” I told him, the only living soul who knew the spot. He had been my chaperone, all those years ago, for trailing some horses out to spring pasture at 5 a.m.—an early morning and a big job, a consequence enforced by my father anytime we (I) stayed out past curfew. 

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by Sara Flitner

I could hear her voice become guarded as she tried to return the conversation to softer ground. “You get so sharp when I’m just trying to get a word in,” she said, but I could already feel myself tensing. “I wish you would hear what I’m actually saying,” I fired back, meaning to stand my ground. 

I was talking to my closest confidant, a friend who had kept my secrets for more than 40 years. I was tired after a long week, and so was she, and things were veering into unusual territory. I could feel myself tense up when she tried to coax me into agreeing with her.

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by Sara Flitner

My son called this morning from Laramie, wisely waiting until he was already there before telling me he was going. He left at 7 p.m. for the five-and-a-half-hour drive over snowy, dark roads where elk and deer lurk by the side of road, waiting for a good time to cross. Not all of them exhibit the same sensibility. I was glad to get the travel report after the fact.

While we have had some near-misses and big dents—most famously, the time I hit a deer near Hell’s Half Acre and had to drive all the way to Jackson with the carcass stuck to the front grill of my car.

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by Sara Flitner

“How to Be Unhappy” was the title of the list I saw on Instagram, and at the very top it read, “Be right,” and “Judge.” There were lots of other things: “Blame others,” “Want more,” “Demand to be understood,” “Make happiness conditional (as in, “when I get the job/paycheck/new car…),” “Want things to be different,” and (the clincher, at least for me), “Try to control things.”

We do so many things in effort to be happy. We try to get things or avoid things, and we usually clothe ourselves in opinions about what everyone else should be doing. In short, we have believe our own thoughts about what is right.

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by Sara Flitner

When I first moved to Jackson, I walked into Jedediah’s Original House of Sourdough, and proprietor Mike Gierau hired me on the spot. My fellow waitresses and cooks had a favorite watering hole, the Log Cabin Saloon, and we gathered there for happy hour too many days of the week for me to confess.

Most of the regulars were older than me, but they were a welcoming bunch and one of my fast favorites was a man  called “Hippy Jeff” because he had a long ponytail and played tennis in shorts only, much to the delight of spectators. His trade was making the most scrumptious desserts – his lemon raspberry cake will be my last meal – and they were served in all the best restaurants in town. He worked all night, slept, and got up in time for a game of tennis or ping pong before showing up to hear the news of the day. 

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by Sara Flitner

Sitting in a conference room under dim lights, I had just finished guiding a “metta” practice for our local police. With the Chief of Police at the head of the table, flanked by burley officers on all sides, and another participant Zooming in from Star Valley, the session was part of a year-long “train the trainer” program the Jackson Police Department is piloting with Becoming Jackson Whole.  

Having already learned the core principles of mindfulness practice, our officers are now biting off a big responsibility: to broaden mindfulness and resilience training to reduce stress and turnover, and to learn effective ways to manage focus, mental health, relationships, and workplace performance. It’s a commitment that begs tough questions, asking significant introspection of our frontline peacekeepers. 

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by Sara Flitner

To witness something with full attention is to make it holy. To observe a thing’s details, its place in the world, its circumstances is to make sacred the thousands of mundane and miraculous ways that our daily lives start anew, flame out, begin again. To see and know something, to know it through paying attention to it, is one way to keep a thing alive. Because, if the essence of something goes unnoticed, can it survive?

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by Sara Flitner

On perhaps my last morning in my home of 24 years, I watched a hummingbird land in the tall aspen trees behind the house. I had decided to rent out my home and try on something different for a while, and as I watched the bird, I felt fully the possibility that I may never do it – the watching, there – again. The trees, planted as saplings, are now taller than two stories, and that morning the leaves were still green, branches full. 

Birds mean something to my two sons and me. Hummingbirds carry the energy of deep connection, because they delighted and uplifted our close friend, Shelley, as she watched them from her hospital bed in the last days of her 49 years. Over this past summer, my yard had been full of hummingbirds, and all the other messengers. Tanagers (family), lazuli buntings (beauty) grosbeaks (persistence), finches (delight in the ordinary)…The home is full of memories, created together and enclosed in our beautiful neighborhood on the creek, in my yard, in its walls, the aspen trees. 

At 11 a.m. sharp, a calvary of competent and caring women showed up at my doorstep: my college roommate, friends from the baby years, the working years, the last handful of years. Grandmothers, dog mothers, artists and executives, divorced, single, married, undecided. Four decades of ages represented. One by one, they backed Suburbans, trucks and Subarus into my driveway, and 59 minutes later, the things I loved and would carry with me were sitting in my new condo, waiting to usher me into a new era.

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by Sara Flitner

You know that friend who, when asked how things are going, always answers, “If I were any better, there’d be two of me?”    

I am sure you are a good person, but say your dog just threw up in the unfortunate path of your bare foot. Or maybe you just learned you must replace the freezer, which is expensive, and also means weeks and weeks without ice cream. So, it would be understandable if the first idea that popped into your head was to get a giant roll of duct tape and figure out how to shut the two of them up. 

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by Sara Flitner

“Let me wear the day
Well so when it reaches you
You will enjoy it.”

- Sonia Sanchez

This is haiku, a style of poetry that reaches into the present moment, the natural world, the heart of the matter. I love its brevity, its force, its directness. I love that I can submerge into it without drama or a big commitment. I can wear it.

Agnes Bourne, a writer, poet, designer, creative, and spreader of joy, will lead our July “Everyday Mindfulness” program at Teton County Library (9 AM on July 9). She will teach us how to use haiku as a mindfulness practice, a creative way to develop attention in the moment, and to really have some fun together.

It’s a perfect time to introduce a few weeks of Daily Acts that are inspired by haiku, by the power of short, intentional phrases to lean on through our busy summer days. At Becoming Jackson Whole, our team is always curious about ways we can pivot, or refocus, or share something we’ve been helped by, in an effort to bring more ease and balance into your busy, unique lives.

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“Catastrophic road failure” said the newspaper article, as if the road itself had let us down. Overnight appeared a crack in the facade, sprouting Medusa-like tendrils out and across the highway, more just beneath the surface. The highway proctors noticed right away and began a pantomime as old as the unstable dirt. A patch, a hopeful work-around, a brave finger in the dike against the mighty force of nature. For a few hours, it held, and people from the towns on either side of the crack sighed relief and went home to dinner, family, sleep.  

Overnight, the crack deepened and widened, its appetite for progress growing until it split and fractured and sent off new fissures, a long run-on sentence diagrammed by nature, sending messages and meaning. “Pay attention,” it said to canyons and cars in all directions. “It’s time you listen.” 

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When I saw the front bumper dangling low to the ground, threatening to detach entirely, I braced myself for the story and wondered how my friends had managed to make it over Teton Pass with the wounded metal hanging by a bolt. Mike eased the truck to a stop and didn’t utter a word as Maureen flung open the passenger door. 

“He just about backed over me in the garage,” she began. “I screamed bloody murder and dove for the floor, but with the engine running, he didn’t hear a thing.” 

By now, Mike had slumped nearly to the floormats behind the steering wheel. This trip was nonnegotiable, I knew—they both wanted to be here for the milestone we would share – but it seemed unlikely that the bumper – or Mike – would make the return trip without collateral damage.  

“I’m so glad you’re both OK,” I said. “But what happened to the front of the car, if he was backing up?” 

Maureen’s eyes narrowed. 

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