The Tetons were made for August. Or maybe August was made for the Tetons.

Whichever way you look at it, languishing by a creek in Grand Teton National Park may be the best way to spend a mid-August morning. If you throw in a writing workshop, then there’s no doubt about it.

I conducted a workshop for the Grand Teton Natural History Association on Aug. 12. Northwest WYO is a long drive for us southeast Wyomingites (430 miles each way) but I’ve driven it three times since April, usually in coordination with my job at the Wyoming Arts Council in Cheyenne.

On this trip, I drove to Casper first for a meeting with the planning committee for the Equality State Book Festival. By the time the bookfest debuts Oct. 19, I will have been meeting with this hardy group for almost two years. The event will feature 40-some writers on panels and presentations, along with another 30 writers reading from and signing copies of their work. Pretty amazing when you consider all those writers either live in WYO or have strong ties to the state. Names you might recognize include Annie Proulx, Tim Sandlin, Gerry Spence, Linda Hasselstrom, C.J. Box, and David Romtvedt. Find out more on the web site.

Equipped with boxes of bookfest posters, postcards, and bookmarks, I dropped off samples on my way to Jackson. The guy at the ice cream store in Shoshoni joked with me that he now only served "no-fat" ice cream because "the fat jumped out of the ice cream and onto me." I advised him to write a book about the experience, and he agreed. I gave him a bookmark and advised him to come to Casper in October to talk with publishers. Down the road in Riverton, I dropped off material at the Central Wyoming College Library and Books & Briar downtown. B&B features a great selection of writers from WYO and the West and hundreds of magazines. It also has a walk-in humidor, possibly the only one in a WYO bookstore.

I reached Dubois fifteen minutes after Two Ocean Books closed. So I walked across the street to Waterwheel Gifts and Books and talked to Jo, who was bustling around on this busy Friday evening. I bought some cards by WYO artist Sarah Rogers and Jo agreed to stalk bookfest bookmarks and a poster. I drove down the street and visited the annual quilters’ festival at the Headwaters Conference Center. I paid a buck to view the quilts (I was the only guy in the place) and left behind some postcards.

The road to Togwotee Pass was shrouded in smoke from a fire burning to the south. The setting sun was a red orb filtered through the curtain of smoke. Scenic for me, not so great for the firefighters on the ground. At the crest of the pass, the Tetons looked like cardboard cutouts through the haze. The panorama from this spot is different each time. Early mornings in summer the mountains can be gold or copper. On mid-winter days, the snow-covered mountains look silver. Sometimes you can’t see them at all, or the summits are shrouded in clouds and they look more likes mesas than mountains.

On the valley floor, tourist season was in full swing. Motor homes clogged the road going south to Jackson, and groups of Sturgis-bound bikers roared by on their way north to Yellowstone. In Jackson, Harleys lined the parking area in front of the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar. Tourists courted death as they sprinted through traffic. I know lots of Wyomingites who won’t go near Jackson in the summer. And many won’t go to Jackson any time. They call it Glitter Gulch, a name I’ve heard in reference to Aspen and Sun Valley, just to name a few other western towns ruined by wretched excess. Other names goof on "Jackson Hole," such as "Jax-hole," which rhymes with you-know-what. People see the place besieged by "coasters" who build big houses with mountain views and never become part of the community. They often assume they are left-leaning celebs, such as Harrison Ford, who did live full-time in The Hole before his divorce. But in reality, the rich are mostly conservative CEOs and politicos. Some are even former Wyomingites like Dick Cheney, who flies into the Hole with great Air Force Two fanfare during breaks from ruining the world. Most of these fly-in residents are not active in the community, content just to fly in for summer breaks and ski vacations.

I like Jackson because it has a lively arts community and scads of writers. Most of the writers are of modest means, such as former dishwasher Tim Sandlin, poet Lyn Dalebout, and novelist Tina Welling. The library is a gem, situated in Virginian Lane (shades of Owen Wister) and host to year-round literary events. They were co-sponsors of this year’s inaugural literary festival. I’ve read at the library twice – once for my own book and once for the "Deep West" anthology. On this trip, I stopped by to deliver a poster and a stack of bookfest bookmarks.

Lyn Dalebout and Tina Welling program the "Writers in the Park" series in which I participated. Lyn, a board member of the Grand Teton Natural History Association (GTNHA), got the event rolling and Tina has stepped in this summer. At my Aug. 12 workshop, Tina was backpacking with family and Lyn was our guide. We met at the flagpole in front of the Moose Visitor’s Center. I arrived early, and stood by the flagpole, looking a bit lonely and forlorn. I was soon joined by Juli of the Historical Society and her friend Deb, a local realtor and writer. Lyn drove up, and as she held up a sign for the workshop, we were joined by others. George is retired and runs an open mike poetry gathering at the bookstore in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Another George sidled up (what are the odds of that?) and he’s a writer from Berkeley. Others joined us, including an artist couple from Milwaukee; Andrew, a young guy vagabonding around the West; Bobbie, new to Jackson and wife of a park ranger; and Barb, a long-time Jacksonian.

As we rolled through the entrance gate into the park, Lyn told me she was spending more time writing and less time organizing things. I knew what she meant. Many writers in WYO are key players in writing and arts organizations. I include myself in that group. Tim and Tina have been involved in the JHWC from the beginning. Our statewide writers group, Wyoming Writers, Inc., has been member-driven for more than 30 years. Bearlodge Writers in Sundance is the most active local writing group in the state and just released its first anthology. Craig Arnold, a UW creative writing program faculty member, has organized a series of poetry slams in Laramie. Writer and historian Barbara Bogart runs the museum in Evanston. Writer Tom Rea and haiku composer/librarian Laurie Lye in Casper head up our bookfest. The list goes on and on.

Many of us have to take breaks from the involvement to get involved (or re-involved) in our own writing. After all, that’s why we did it in the first place. I took a month off this summer to write at the Jentel Artist Residency Program. Craig Arnold won the Rome Prize last year and spent the last year writing in Rome. Lyn said she was taking a three-day writing break in Yellowstone later in August. I know people all over the U.S. in the same boat.

On this Saturday morning, I was teaching a workshop but also taking time to write. We gathered in a complex of historic cabins, and I spun out a bizarre little idea that I’d come up on the banks on Piney Creek in June. Here’s the way I described it to the GTNHA:

"Michael Shay requests that you SLOW DOWN. You've heard of the ‘slow food’ movement? On Aug. 12, we will practice the ‘slow life’ movement. As we begin our adventure, Mike will ask you to slow down, look around, and appreciate the landscape. Look deeply and imagine living at this slower and more thoughtful pace. Imagine yourself in a time where you're a forest dweller who experiences the hyperactive visitors of the future as bursts of light and heat. They, on the other hand, experience forest dwellers as some sort of ‘living statues’ because of your slow, thoughtful pace. This scenario comes from an early story by Michael called ‘Still Life in Forest.’ We'll use it as a jumping off place for participants to write about modern life's hectic pace -- and ways that nature can change your perspective."

I was surprised what I saw once I sat on the bank of another WYO creek, this one carrying late-summer runoff from the Teton glaciers. Water bugs skittered along the surface near shore. Water plants weaved with the force of the current. The ripples caught the morning’s slanting sun and made a constantly changing pattern. I tried to pin down the sound of the creek: babbling, gurgling, etc. The grasshoppers clicked and buzzed as they flew. I could hear the distant hum of cars along the park road. And, of course, the occasional roar of a jet taking off from airport, which is built partially on GTNP land.

I changed sites, sat on the porch of another cabin. Birds twittered above me, and I thought they might be circling above the cabin. But they sounded closer. I moved away from the porch and saw a wren’s tiny head poking from a cavity in a roof beam. Sticks poked from the cavity and I realized that the wren had built a nest. It flew out and perched on a limb of a willow. It seemed to be looking at me and I wondered if I was too close to the nest. I moved away and the bird returned to its home. 

The workshoppers wrote some memorable work. Deb’s poem began with noxious weeds and became, by its end, a very personal prayer. Bobbie tied in her nature observations with an incident that happened in an old house in New York State when she located a poem written by her loving but non-poetic husband. Andrew seized on the "time" theme and contrasted the life spans of a Teton glacier with that of a fly. A memorable line from the fly’s P.O.V.: "Today is my favorite decade."

I ended the session with a reading from my story "Somewhere Without Gates" from The Weight of a Body. As we left the site, several participants took photos and we exchanged e-mail addresses. It was a collection of eclectic people, part locals and part visitors, just the mix that GTNHA aims to attract to its artistic offerings. I thought a lot about them and their writing and their humanity during the seven-hour drive back to Cheyenne.

--Michael Shay, Cheyenne, Wyo., Aug. 13, 2006