Day 12
December 25, 2023
A ‘grand’ finale! This image series of Teton Vista Traverse was made by Sno-Cat operator Brandon Cano, a groomer at Grand Targhee Resort. (You’ll find more of his images on Instagram.)
“Those photos came after a hectic night in the ‘Cat,” Cano wrote when we asked for permission to share his work. “As you can see, the cut banks on the side show how high the snow was drifted in before I came and cleared out the road so lift maintenance could get up the mountain to start up the lift. I spent my entire shift clearing roads and the unload areas for Colter and Dreamcatcher [lifts]. It’s always nice being up top as the sun is rising over the Tetons. Just you and the mountain, listening to your favorite songs with a handful of like-minded people who also love being out there.”
Happy Holidays, from all of us at Becoming Jackson Whole!
Day 11
December 24, 2023
This brief essay explores longing and the long reach of grief—memories that can pull hard at our intention to stay mindfully in the present, this time of year. It’s part of an ongoing collection that lives on Substack and Instagram called The Keepthings—stories of lost loved ones, inspired by the things they leave behind. You can subscribe to receive new Keepthings by email (free!).
Please enjoy “Letters to Santa, 1958 and 1959” by Nancy Malcom.
Day 10
December 23, 2023
Jackson author Tina Welling has spent more than seven years leading journaling and self-reflection practices with inmates of Teton County Jail, a calling she didn’t fully understand when she started but that resulted in profound and life-altering compassion—for the inmates, and for the trauma she uncovered in herself.
In the introduction to her resulting craft memoir, Tuesdays in Jail: What I Learned Teaching Journaling to Inmates, she writes that she was “floored by how much she had in common with the incarcerated: ‘It’s just that they had been arrested and I had not.’”
Here, by special permission, is an excerpt from Tuesdays, by Tina Welling:
[Chapter Thirty-One]
Aaron was in his midtwenties, built strongly, with dark hair cut short and blue eyes that didn’t seem to miss much. This was the second time he’d been incarcerated here for domestic battery, both times accused by the same woman. The first time Aaron was jailed for a week, released on a Friday, arrested again the following Tuesday. This second time he was put in maximum security. During Aaron’s visit down to see me, he was spewing anger. His body shifted restlessly on the plastic chair.
“I’ve written shit all over the walls of that stupid-ass dinky cell, and I pace from one piece of shit I’ve penciled at eye level to the next one.”
“Hmm,” I said, “sounds kind of like walking meditation, except the goal is to feel calm inside rather than fury.”
Aaron’s body stilled. “What’s walking meditation?”
I stood up on my side of the locked-down grated room and showed him how to walk mindfully. Slow steps, attention directed inwardly.
Aaron didn’t come down for the following Tuesday-night workshop. When that happened, I tried not to judge myself about having failed to say the right things when I had the chance. But then he came to see me the week after that.
“I erased all the shitty crap I wrote on my walls.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. Now I’ve got four things written, one on each wall. Things like: Stay strong. Be calm. And now I’m doing more like you were saying.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m doing a walking meditation. I walk from one saying to another over and over.” Aaron nodded and smiled. “I’m feeling pretty good.”
This is what I find wonderful about understanding there really are no opposites, no one place, for example, where cold becomes hot, but rather a continuum. One step, one degree, on the continuum from what does not work for us to what does. That was how Aaron moved from fury to calm. Two weeks later, when he was released from max and able to join the regular workshop, he was referring to himself as a man in need of help, and he was taking steps to get it.
This is why I continued volunteering at the jail on Tuesday nights. Who else got to witness this kind of uplifting event every week? I watched realization wash across faces, saw insight widen eyes, caught features soften when the men were encouraged to offer self-compassion. What I did was merely nod toward the light switch. The inmates themselves flipped it on.
Joseph Campbell said, “Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.”
That made jail Aaron’s sacred space.
And mine.
Day 9
December 22, 2023
This ode to aging is chock full of gems, as Anne Lamott is known to gather. The author of several books, including Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers and Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Lamott gets your ego by the elbow (regardless of your age) and says, “Walk with me.” Laugh out loud if the mood strikes; look away if you must—but likely there’s something here to nod in recognition over. Please enjoy this op-ed by Anne Lamott.
Day 8
December 21, 2023
This short piece is from a collection, Hold This, by Oregonian poet and journalist John Martin. It’s for anyone who has ever felt they’re
“running and running but also
thinking [they] should just
turn around and say,
“Stop it! Stop chasing me. …”
Please enjoy “Bear in Mind.”
Day 7
December 20, 2023
This flash essay (meaning, short!) comes from Beautiful Things, a long-running feature of the literary journal River Teeth. In just these few words, author Rebecca Turkewitz celebrates the joy in ordinary things—and of noticing the joy of others. You can subscribe to receive Beautiful Things each Monday (free!) by signing up for River Teeth’s newsletter.
Please enjoy this small gem by Rebecca Turkewitz.
Day 6
December 19, 2023
This brief essay by Jackson architect Bruce Hawtin, co-created with Becoming Jackson Whole, is for anyone who has had to reorient themselves, when the present no longer contains what they thought it would. It remains one of our best-loved blog posts, ever.
Please enjoy this piece by Bruce Hawtin.
Day 5
December 18, 2023
This poem first appeared in 2015 in Joy Harjo’s collection, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings. This recording of it comes from Harjo’s 2021 album, “I Pray For My Enemies,” a collection of both song and verse. Harjo, who performed in Jackson in June 2023, is an American poet, musician, playwright, author, and member of the Muscogee Nation. Between 2019-2022, she served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor.
“The concept for ‘I Pray for My Enemies’ began with an urgent need to deal with discord, opposition,” Harjo writes. “The urgency had a heartbeat and in any gathering of two or more, perhaps the whole planet, our hearts lean to entrainment – that is, to beat together.”
Please enjoy this reading of “For Calling the Spirit Back,” performed here by Joy Harjo.
Day 4
December 17, 2023
Brian Trapp, an instructor at the University of Oregon, wrote “Twelve Words: Thoughts of Compassion Capture What Words Cannot” for his brother, Danny. Through the lens of disability, Trapp says, all of us get a look at how “language is a flawed and limited instrument. We can never truly know what someone feels or thinks, even if they have a million words at their disposal.” In bridging the gap, he writes, “We are all twins—we all finish each other’s sentences.”
Please enjoy this essay, abridged from its original publication in the Kenyon Review.
Day 3
December 16, 2023
Dr. Rachel Dunlop, a senior research fellow with Brain Chemistry Labs in Jackson, captured a stunning series of images on September 18, 2023, of aurora over Grand Teton National Park (click here to view). Dr. Dunlap is the social media director and active contributor to the Teton Photography Club. Read more about her work at drrachie.net.
Click here to see this aurora series. Enjoy!
Day 2
December 15, 2023
This poem—a prayer, really—comes from a collection, A Thousand Mornings, published in 2012. The book is one of Oliver’s later works in a prolific career marked by a Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and others.
A notoriously reclusive artist, Oliver wrote largely of the natural world, without any special priority of the human perspective or achievement. The entirety of this poem, for example, unfolds in the space of a few minutes, just outside her own porch door, at her long-time home in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Please enjoy Mary Oliver’s own reading of “I Happened to Be Standing,” recorded when she was 79. (Click here to listen.)
Day 1
December 14, 2023
You may have heard Riley Downing’s “deep, dusty, and drawling” voice with the acclaimed New Orleans combo the Deslondes, but his solo career—of which “Deep Breath” is a signature—has its roots in his home state of Missouri, to which he returned to help with his brother’s plumbing business. Back home, he began working up slice-of-life songs, which he sound-tested “mostly for old friends and old dogs and whatever other critters were within earshot.”
Of “Deep Breath,” he writes,
There was so much going on in the world socially, politically and health-wise while we were making this record that I didn't really know what kind of music people would even want to hear. But I knew I didn't want to write a bunch of sad songs where you just stare at the fire and feel bad for yourself. I wanted the record to be about looking at things up on the upside – you know, “take a deep breath and we'll all get through this.”
Enjoy. (Click here to listen.)