Jack Turner

Contains an account of what it is like to live and work in the Grand Tetons, with accounts of dangerous and deadly climbs, and discusses the natural beauty of the region and environmental issues.

A Year in the Teton Range

Teewinot

Bryan Alexander

Teewinot is a gorgeous book, one to savor. It reminds the reader of how to better perceive the natural world. Jack Turner is an American mountain hermit in the classical Chinese style.

The book is structured to follow the author through most of a year in the Grand Tetons. This narrative describes what Jack Turner sees and does there, while arcing back into his memories and also exploring the natural history of the area. 

What Turner sees and does involves lots of moving around the mountains. Teewinot is filled with climbing, hiking, paddling, a little driving, and a lot more climbing. This vigorous activity balances the author's practice of meditating, along with reflections on wilderness policies and the philosophy of nature. This might sound cumbersome, but works brilliantly. Each strand leads nicely to the next, often by association. The meditative aspects complement the athletics neatly.

What Turner remembers is his life in the mountains, especially concerning the fellow guides and Teton-lovers he's spent time with. So we read a mix of autobiography and group history. We see his childhood interest in these then-mysterious mountains become a lifelong passion. We learn of his fellow climbers, their personalities and fates.

Teewinot is a pleasure to read, partly because of Turner's voice. He offers miniature portraits of fellow mountaineers:
When he died, Willi was fifty-three years old, a white-haired professor of philosophy, and for some people, a prophet. He had earned his wisdom. Willi's daughter, Nanda Devi, died on the mountain he named her after. He had no toes; he limped. He was in constant pain. And still he wandered the mountains, seeking. (130)

Turner's prose is both muscular and celebrates physical prowess:
Toby and Lane [have] lived most of their lives in Jackson Hole and are happy to be in the mountains. They're both fit as SEALs. I once watched Toby hang by his knees from a rope ladder set at forty-five degrees and do sit-ups for so long, I got bored watching. (178-9)
Turner finds slapstick comedy in the Tetons:
On several occasions I have found moose sleeping on my porch. Once I got up in the night to pee off my porch. As I walked out the door stark naked, a figure rose up, snorting. I ran - straight into the doorjamb. Bleeding from the nose, I stumbled into the cabin, found my headlamp, and shined it into the night. A cow moose stood a dozen yards away, her eyes glowing, her head down, vapors purling from her nose - formidable and every bit as upset as I was. I defiantly peed off the porch in her direction and went back to bed. She slept somewhere else. (28-9)

He can also write gorgeous descriptions of landscapes:
Seven thousand feet below us, bluish lines of squalls dumped rain across the valleys. The layer level with us was chaotic with disturbance, a maw of whirling vapors and faintly greenish light. Above us, mature cumulonimbus bulged like muscles; higher yet, ribbons of cirrostratus disintegrated like spiraled nebula. The world became lurid, apocalyptic - the mise-en-scène of opera. Visibility dropped to fifty feet. My climbing gear hummed in tune with minute halos of fuzzy sparks covering every metal surface. The rock buzzed in varying frequencies, like alarms. (107)

I love that combination of specialized language (meteorology, aesthetics) with physically imminent words (bulged, maw, dumped).

This is a deeply masculine book in all kinds of ways. I've already mentioned its love of physical prowess. Turner depicts people, including himself, who push themselves to heights (literal and metaphorical) of bodily ability. Most of the book's characters people are men. Turner loves his isolation, never addressing romantic or sexual relations. It's the antithesis of Eat, Pray, Love, flung out from an exaltation of testosterone.

It's also an anarchist book. Turner writes as an anarchist, self-reliant, connected to a small, local group, and deeply suspicious of governments. "Rules are not about order; they are about obedience." (153) He celebrates Thoreau both for Walden and for "Civil Disobedience."

This is the first Turner I've read, and I want more. I read this during a Vermont November, up in the comparatively tiny Green Mountains, while snow came and went and temperatures dropped to zero F. Teewinot made me pay more attention to the way western winds pushed around leafless birch trees, and made me look more closely for bear sign. It brought my home back to me - what a striking achievement.

And I really want to visit the Teton park. Of course.

Teewinot A Year in the Teton Range

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