Community in Nature: Welcome to the Rockies
Enjoying the Teton Range and Jackson Hole
I took the long way to Grand Teton National Park from Salt Lake City. The 191 winds through Flaming Gorge National Rec Area: a scenic drive through geologic history with striking views.
I stopped off the highway a ways past Rock Springs, Wyoming to eat dinner and get some shut eye. The next morning, I kept following the 191 up to the town of Jackson.
Jackson (and by extensions the valley it’s in, fondly called Jackson Hole) is completely charming. The town embraces its old west heritage but upscales it for the eclectic band of tourists who traipse through year-round to take advantage of the nearby Teton Range’s incredible array of hiking opportunities in the summer and five-star skiing and snowboarding resorts in the winter. The town is packed with interesting, unique shops and a variety of restaurants, and features old west classics and a unique monument of elk antlers (which fall off and are regrown every year, like a snake shedding its skin. No Elk were harmed in the making of this conversation piece).
I enjoyed a day wandering around Jackson, and then a day driving through Grand Teton and beginning to explore the wider valley. Finally, though, I realized I really needed a day to get chores and work taken care of, which brought me to Colter Bay. This area inside the park has showers, a laundromat, water spigots, a general store, free WiFi, and much more. I opened up all the doors and got down to business.
I’m not going to lie: I’m all about opening up Danica’s doors and getting a compliment on my rig every ten minutes. It’s probably my new favorite pastime. I’m just so proud of all the work it took to get here and how it all came together. It’s so much fun to show it off and get positive feedback.
All these people who want to take a peek tend to apologize for glancing through my open doors and offer me a compliment. Which, ok, if I had it all closed up and you came knocking on the window asking to look around, that’d be one thing. But if I’ve got all the doors opened up and I’m hanging out in an area where there’s a lot of foot traffic, I feel like I’m kind of asking for it — no apology necessary.
That might seem like a contradiction to one of my old posts from my trip up to Alaska, when I was complaining about a guy not leaving me alone in a coffee shop. And, sure, that was another instance where I was in a public place out of necessity because I needed the WiFi, and was trying to get work done despite being in a public place. And I think there are two points that make it different.
First, I feel differently about someone being interested in my van and someone being interested in me. Not that I don’t want anyone to ever be interested in me, but I definitely feel differently about it. I guess because the van is something that I worked so hard on, and struggled through. It’s an accomplishment, a product of my labors. Plus, I feel like I know what to expect from someone who is interested in my van. It’s usually either because they want to build one themselves, or because they’ve never seen anything like it before. Either way, they’re generally interested in satisfying their curiosity and moving on with their lives. Maybe, if they’re really interested, they’ll ask if they could email me with some questions about vanlife. But it’s always polite, and positive, and usually a limited interaction with no long term expectations.
That’s not always the case with people (ok, let’s be honest, men) approaching just me. Sure, most people are generally harmless, but I never know what to expect. I’ve been in a situation when I went out to a bar with my best friend and a guy came up to me — I was polite, and tried to keep an open mind, but when I started to feel uncomfortable and tried to walk away, he refused to let go of my arm (which, I’ll be honest, was more than a little terrifying). I’ve been in situations where a guy walks up and asks for my number, and if I say no, he gets angry. I’ve had guys cuss me out because I wasn’t texting them back often enough. And it’s frustrating, because I’m not the one that came up to them. I’m not the one that wanted that conversation, that number exchange, that dance. Honestly, I think half the girls in the world who have a reputation for being cold or “bitchy” only have that reputation because it’s a whole lot easier than trying to be nice and paying for it later.
At any rate, I know what to expect when people approach the van, and it’s way less stressful than being approached just as myself.
The second thing is that these people approaching the van are apologizing for bothering me when they aren’t even actually bothering me. That alone tells me that if I really couldn’t talk, and said as much, that they would respect that and walk away. And that’s very different than the incident in Seattle.
Generally speaking, I like talking to people. I’ve had some memorable conversations just by saying hello to a stranger who happened to be sitting nearby. Once I got into a thoughtful, friendly political debate with a Russian expat who worked for the U.S. State department. And I don’t want anyone to feel like they shouldn’t strike up a conversation with me. I’m just saying that it can be nerve-wracking, because given past experience and the countless encounters I’ve heard about from friends, I know that sometimes there’s an expectation there that shouldn’t be. An expectation I’m going to have to placate somehow if I don’t want to get shouted at or cussed out.
I think there are boundaries that everyone deserves to have respected. If I try to strike up a conversation with someone and they indicate that they’re not interested in talking, for whatever reason, then I’m not going to push them. And I’m going to be polite about it. Because they have just as much right to be left alone as I do to try to open up a conversation. I don’t have the right to take it personally, or attack them for exercising that right to be left alone, and it would be incredibly rude of me to try to invade their space or privacy after they’ve said that they wanted to be left alone. It’s not about me.
And I’d expect that same respect from anyone else.
I went off on a bit of a tangent there. I guess it was just something I was thinking about a lot today, hanging out in the Colter Bay parking lot at Grand Teton National Park. I’ve lost count of how many people came up to ask me about the van, and I’ve loved every minute of it. These people are genuinely interested, and some have lots of questions and some just want to look, but even the ones I had more of a conversation with never even asked my name. I think there’s something really cool about that. With social media so prevalent in today’s society, sometimes it feels like we’re expected to follow the lives of anyone we happen to strike up a conversation with. But not every conversation has to be life-altering. Not every person you meet and like has to be a new friend.
It’s ok to just connect in the moment, to share some humanity and a smile. To be here in this moment, nearly eight billion people around the world and we two happen to be here, in the same place and the same time, sharing an interest. And it’s ok to come out of that moment and move on, to let it fall into the past and just leave it there.
There’s something so freeing about that. I feel strange even bringing it up, because it seems like it should just be common sense: you don’t have to know every person you meet. But it’s somehow earth-shattering.
On a semi-related note, I’m super excited. When I went to Alaska last summer, the driver of every camper van I passed waved at me. And I was always panicking, trying to readjust my grip on the steering wheel to throw up a wave because I was never ready for it (though now that I think about it, I don’t know why I needed to readjust my grip in order to wave, since that really only requires one hand and it doesn’t even really have to leave the steering wheel). And this year, I was ready. Hoo-boy, I was sitting up in my seat and lifting my hand the second I saw a van distinguishable as a camper van come over the horizon.
And for some reason, I didn’t seem to be getting any waves back.
It was devastating, honestly. I was so looking forward to the community of vanlife, and here no one seemed remotely interested in me. I guess it could be seen as a good thing, if I’m so stealth that even other vanlifers don’t notice me, then I’m pretty damn stealth.
But the point is, I’m now in Grand Teton National Park, and the van-people are waving back!
I realize that’s a pretty small thing to get excited about. I think it’s because this thing does get pretty lonely. It’s just me, myself, and I. Particularly on the big driving days, there are only so many hours of music, podcasts, and audiobooks you can listen to before you just get tired of listening.
That little wave is more than just a wave. It’s like we’re saying “I see you. You’re like me. We’re in this together.”
So I guess, when it comes down to it, it’s all about community. The community you find in people you don’t even know, just by being able to share a place, or a moment, or an interest, or an idea. I don’t have to know you, because in this small way, we’re the same. And we’re in it together. That’s enough, really.
Next time, on Van Watch: I make a huge mistake and completely lose my mind. Will I end up stuck in a parking lot for days on end? Tune in on Wednesday to find out!
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