On ID-33 heading eastward out of Sugar City, I caught my first glimpse of the Tetons. They peaked up and around the Snake River Mountains in front of them, appearing through the brownish haze (which I learned later was smoke from Alaskan wildfires) like an idea not fully in focus. I had been about one-fourth debating with myself if I should have just stayed in the Ketchum area one more night and then driven all the way home rather than take this trip to Targhee, but when I saw the Tetons it was like that moment in an argument when your interlocutor says something irrefutable. I said aloud, "Oh. The Tetons." Like: right. Rising jagged, majestic, unmistakable--though not really as breastlike as the French-Canadian traders who named them apparently wished. (Fellas--there are three of them. You must have been really lonely.)
Debate over. I was doing exactly the right thing.
