Home to Colter Bay

When I drove into Colter Bay on Sunday afternoon, I realized that I had absolutely no idea where to go. So I found my way down to the marina, trusting that things would sort themselves out. Down on the docks I found my new manager, Mary.

 “Lily! I'm so glad that you're here! I'm really sorry, but you're going to have to leave again, right now. Drive up to HR at Jackson Lake Lodge and get all your paperwork filed and take the drug test...I want you to be able to start working tomorrow morning.”

So I got back in my car and went off to be processed, the usual slog of W-4, I-9, whiz-in-the-cup, sign-on-the-line...Fortunately Mary had called ahead to expedite things, so it didn't take much more than all afternoon. Paperwork in hand, I found my way to the housing office back at Colter Bay, where I received my room keys from the dorm supervisor.

My room was institutional, utterly without character, and somehow moving my things in there did not help at all. But it had a roof and wifi, so my standards were more than satisfied.

The next morning I showed up at the marina at 8 AM. Colter Bay was beautiful, a small protected inlet cradled by a barrier island of lodgepole pines, rows of docks, expensive boats, and bald eagles drifting overhead. Above everything towered the Tetons in all their glory. On the way out west in the spring I had driven past these very mountains, and looked at them, and regretted that I had no time to spend with them – but here I was.

That first day, I did nothing but ride the cruise boats, taking notes on the narration. I soon learned that I wouldn't be driving these boats, just talking. My official title was First Mate. Unlike the Glacier Park Boat Co, Grand Teton Lodge required their captains to carry 100-ton licenses; the three captains were retired men in their 60's and 70's. Two of them actually lived on their own boats in the marina. The other first mates were closer to my age.

The tours followed the same basic script - a little geography and geology, a little history, some ecology, some glaciers and bird-watching – but each first mate put their own spin on it. One focused more on history, one told a lot of jokes, one preferred stories, and one, bless his heart, was a terrible public speaker and did hardly any talking at all.

After the third time listening to the tour, I started to think of the things I would say when my turn came before the mike

As it turned out, perhaps unsurprisingly, I found myself talking a lot about ecology. Damn, I could talk about ospreys and bark beetles and fire ecology all day long! Hadn't I spent the whole summer doing just that? If it got a little heavy, I switched to telling stories about John Colter's misadventures with the Blackfeet in 1807, or talked about hiking in bear country. That always got them going.

“No hikers have ever been attacked while hiking in a group of three or more,” I'd say. Pause. “So as long as at least one of the other two is slower than you...”

Big laughs. Why are variations of this joke so universally popular? I don't love it myself, but I'd noticed all the way back in Glacier that it went down well, so I kept it up.

And so on. I learned to introduce myself at the beginning and talk about myself, then ask people where they were from, so we could bond.

“Oh yeah, you're from Chicago? I went to school there. Russia? Used to live there. Maine? I worked there for a few years, same with Vermont...”

This only backfired once, when I made a crack about leaving the state of Ohio for greener and more interesting pastures, only to look up and realize that half the people on the boat were from Cleveland. Whoops.

But almost always I liked the people, and the people liked me, and it was like being a teacher again, except that I got tipped.

My first work week lasted nine days, sometimes from 6:45 AM to 8:30 at night. By the end I could give the tour in my sleep. Which wasn't to say, I had no fun at all. The Colter Bay village was home to a virtual employee UN: Russians, Turks, Jamaicans, Bulgarians, and a single Botswanan, not to mention the usual run of American college kids and misfits. Most people congregated every night to booze and shoot pool in the rec room, and I often joined them.

The rec room could be a wild place, especially late at night when the kitchen people came in. They were a volatile crew; one memorable night, my ability to quaff Jim Beam so impressed one of the cooks that he proposed marriage on the spot... There were several fights, but I steered clear.

The days had a pattern to them, a flow, and I liked that pattern, and so September passed under the mountains where I most wanted to be in the world.