“The Three Breasts are Real!”

Kathryn Boynton
Narrative

“Good morning girls, time to get up. Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey.” This was what we heard every morning for the 7 days that we were in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, at the Teton Science School. Not that Kate, Sylvie and I minded hearing these words, from the all-familiar voice of Rachel, our cabin counselor. Her voice wasn’t the gruff, groggy, morning voice of my father yelling, “get up its quarter after seven!” from the bottom of the stairs. Her voice sparkled like sunrays on the crisp new snow, as she sang out her routine wake-up call. She never became angry with the 10 girls in the “Porcupine” cabin, the meanest she ever got was, “ok I’m going to turn on the lights now,” and then we knew, it was time to get up.

The cold bathroom floor sent a chill up my feet and throughout my body. As I brushed my teeth, all I could think about was the horrendously long, seven hours outside doing fieldwork I had to look forward to. It was our fourth day at this grimy, frozen place, far from home, and I was ready to see my parents and friends again. We kept hearing stories about the "astonishing", "miraculous", "breathtaking", Teton Mountains, that were supposedly just outside our cabin window, but not once had we been able to see them trough the almost solid fog and blizzards we had been living in. We were beginning to think that they were not real.

I stuffed my toothbrush into by ditty bag and unscrewed a small white container. The cream inside smelled tangy sweet, the citrus reminded me of my mother, and tears stung my eyes, with a twang of homesickness. I smeared the cream over my wind burned face, and along my chapped and bleeding knuckles. I zipped the cream into the bag and leaped around the puddles of water seeping out from under our wet boots, into the bedroom.

Rachel came into our room and nearly whispered, “Look out the window. You can see them.” There was no question as to what she was talking about, we darted to the window, tripping over our many layers of clothing that we piled on each morning to protect us from winters deathly cold. As Annie pulled the curtains aside, light shocked my eyes. The fog had cleared and the sun shone brightly on smooth, bleach white snow. My eyes rose from the snow to the “museum” lodge, and as I looked for the light blue, Crayola colored sky, I saw the biggest most, “astonishing", "miraculous", and "breathtaking" mountains that, as far as I was concerned, ever existed. That one is “The Grand Teton” a local mentioned, pointing to the chief mountain at the center of the range. Later that day, as we sat on our foam “sit pads”, eating our PB + J in a mountain of white crystals, we would fine out that “teton” meant “three breasts”. They pierced the sky, and dominated all other aspects of what I now saw as the beautiful scenery. Everywhere I looked I saw sagebrush, leafless aspen trees, I even thought I glimpsed a deer ducking into the tree coverage out of the corner of my eye. All life was gone from the trees and plants, but the world around me was alive with the spell the Tetons cast on everything in their radius. Thinking of our own green“hills”, my knowledge of height was dwarfed compared to these mammoth mountains.

Suddenly the cold, the dirt, the fact that I hadn’t brushed my hair or taken a shower in days and had been wearing the same two pairs of insulated clothing ever since Monday morning didn’t matter anymore. Everything seemed worthwhile, the girls in my cabin seemed more like friends, and home didn’t seem so far away. Don’t get me wrong, I was still happy to go home on Saturday morning, but as I stepped onto the airplane, there was an empty sinking in my stomach.