Pebble, Rock, Boulder
“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 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.”
Momentum built as it is wont to do, until the force became upheaval and in its aftermath, a divide.
Most often, we speak about cracks in the facade in metaphor. We pull in drama, how “the divide between us might as well be the Grand Canyon.” Only in this case, reality has outsized hyperbole and we are getting very clear instructions. It’s time to pay attention.
For years, we’ve known that we have a limited footprint of developable real estate. We’ve known that Jackson Hole is not a metaphor but an actual geographic valley surrounded by mountain ranges, with only three roads in. We’ve known that we need to be more thoughtful about what we do with the land that is available to us, and that we are not functional without the people who travel the pass each day to do the work of teaching, healing, growing things, serving things, making things.
We’ve known that we need family and workforce housing more than another block of hotel rooms. And that most sales of existing and developed properties are to people who do not hold jobs in Teton County, further threatening our sustainability. We do not have policies that prioritize the people who work to make Jackson work. I see this in my own neighborhood, where most of the recent sales have been to second- and third-home owners, though they don’t yet outnumber us year-round locals.
Is it time to consider a way to safeguard existing housing stock for the next generation of people who safeguard our sustainability? A deed restriction on a portion of existing built homes when they turn over, purchased to ensure that the next buyer is someone who works in Teton County? Yes, it would be expensive until the inventory builds up. But not as expensive as a tunnel. Not as expensive as the economy screeching to a halt. Not as expensive as becoming a shell of a community where cracks no longer matter, because everyone can see through the façade.
In the meantime, many good people are rushing to help other good people. Nonprofits are stepping in to offer gas cards, short-term housing, help with childcare. Many employers have impressed me by taking specific, practical, compassionate action — altering shifts, offering more remote work, creating short-term housing options. These things respect the reality that for many, home and work are separated by a gash in the road.
We do come together in crisis. I love that about who we are, who you are, as a community of caring, action-oriented folks.
The question is, when the dust settles and the road is eventually patched, will we remain motivated to work through these issues for the long haul? Will we rally the laser-clear attention that is necessary to accept the complexities in reality and fashion policies to sustain us? Will we be decent then? Will we be brave?