We’re driving to the 45th parallel of latitude, the halfway mark between the equator and the north pole. As we cross into Montana on Highway 89 we’ve left behind the shelter of the mountains and it is brutally hot. “I thought it’s supposed to get cooler the further north we go!” someone says. But then we’re in Montana, mostly just so Dad can check it off his list, never mind that stepping across an arbitrary state line is different than actually spending time in a place. We stop for pictures and our phones ding with messages, back in the land of service. The boys slide down the embankment to the Gardner River and strip down, jump in the frothy water. The girls stand and watch, wish it were easier to join them. Then we’re back in Wyoming, climbing back up into the subtle mountains of Yellowstone, listening to Kacey Musgraves and breathing a sigh of relief as the temperatures drop. 

I’m not sure what I was expecting but it wasn’t this. Yellowstone is unimaginably big, to the point it doesn’t feel cohesive. Most of the park is forested; you drive through undulating trees from one clearing to another. What’s behind the pines is always a surprise. In some areas the park is pockmarked with steaming portals to the earth’s molten interior. Many of the geothermal features are grotesquely ugly, belching sulfurous mud and steam, but some of the pools are so benignly beautiful it’s hard to believe they’d kill you in a matter of seconds. In the southeast Yellowstone Lake appears huge and calm, an oasis from the cauldrons of the deep. In the northern section, towards Montana, the trees fall away to a barren high desert that surrounds the strange little town of Mammoth. 

Our days in the park fell into that beautiful camping rhythm: coffee and oatmeal in the biggest patch of sunlight you can find; getting dressed in the morning chill with agonizing slowness; piling in the car for that day’s sightseeing; eating way too many pb&js with a view; pulling back into camp with enough time for a beer before dinner; getting ready for bed while it’s still light out so you can go straight from campfire to sleeping bag when the dew descends. We all felt like this was our real life, couldn’t imagine living any other way. It was a shock to return home. That’s what’s so important about these trips, I think—when all the distractions and busyness are stripped away, you’re reminded of what makes you feel alive. Hold these truths close and let them guide your life—they are a gift.

On Wednesday morning we woke up cloaked in rust-colored dust. The wind was fierce all night, howling in great gusts that drove sprays of sand through the tent mesh. Grit crunched between my teeth, my toes. Outside was not much better. The clouds hung steely and low; the wind made little effort to abate as we boiled water, made coffee, made oatmeal. I squinted to protect my eyes from errant flying sand. Why do we do this to ourselves? 

Later it was clear and calm. In the enveloping warmth of the afternoon we shook out the sleeping bag, inverted the tent, carefully remade the bed. The sky glimmered impossibly blue, the dust lay where it should. The canyon, highlighted by great swaths of sunlight, shone with a haze that put Thomas Moran to shame. Behold, the desert in all her glory, once again neatly composed, pretending for a little while to be docile and hospitable. Here, then—the reward she offers for weathering the uncomfortable nights, gifts intoxicating enough to convince ourselves to return again and again.

summer 2018

Perhaps one of the best things about marriage is the second family into which, for better or for worse, you’re grafted. I really lucked out with mine. With open arms and wide smiles have I been welcomed into this charming Texan family and its heartwarming traditions. To know this family is to know the Frio River—either through stories or, if you’re lucky, experience. On these banks are over forty years of family history, strong and gnarled like the roots of the cypress trees standing guard over the clear, cool river. 

The schedule of each day at the Frio is that there is no schedule. Time is irrelevant—what does a clock matter when there is sleeping and eating and swimming and beer drinking and reminiscing to be done? When the sun starts to dip low in the west, the light is filtered golden and soft through the trees. Looking at old family photos from the Frio, that light has not changed in thirty years. In the sunset of our last night, our aunt Gwen leaned back with a satisfied sigh and said this—and here she swept her arm in an arc around us—has always been her idea of heaven. There have been some unwelcome changes through the years at the Frio, but Gwen is right; when I first arrived at the river, newly engaged and full of wonder, I knew I’d arrived at a sacred place.

Lately I’ve been haunted by our parents’ and grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ shoeboxes of film photos. Even when the slippery memories are physically tangled and unsorted, they’re still so tangibly there, glossy photos that can be held and angled towards the light and waved around. In the days leading up to the Frio this year, my sister-in-law pulled out box after box of yesteryear’s river memories, and those prints inspired me to document this.

images from summer 2019

In the summer, the mornings and evenings are so wildly beautiful and fleeting they cause me pain. I feel it’s my duty to absorb every inch of this ephemeral world, but I can only do so much—there are too many blooming things and dappled shadows and I am small and tired; how could I possibly do justice to it all?

I’m filled with so much nostalgia I have a hard time seeing straight. I feel deeply for my restless, fledgling teenaged self, for the summer days I used to perceive to be so mind-numbingly dull, for my sisters that now navigate through the same world. Seven and nine years younger than me, they have been my muses for over a decade.

I am fiercely protective of them. When I see their bodies stretching sharper and taller I ache like I do during summer’s gloaming. A gift to watch them become more sophisticated by the day, but isn’t there some way to protect them from the turmoil of growing pains?

All this heartache, and I am not even a mother.