Vance's Journal

April 28, 2000

It’s been a terribly hectic week trying to get this website completed so...

I took a break, took a walk through the neighborhood where I live with my wife, Ann, just the two of us now.  My children have children of their own far away from us whom someone told me once, “is good”.  They were wrong.

In this neighborhood I have no close friends.  I’ve never been inside my neighbor’s house next door.  Someone told me once that this, too, “is good”.  They were also wrong about this.  I grew up in the South and I know!

But, I do have close friends…in Siberia, in Switzerland, places far and near.  I have friends I haven’t seen in 36 years!  We’re still friends.

I live in a small log house perched high on top of a butte overlooking all of Jackson Hole!  I call it Carruth’s Teton Heaven.  Today as I walked along the ridge the sound of an icy wind cutting through the tall white trunks of aspen trees was good.  The air was clean and crisp, the way it ought to be.  It is spring in Jackson Hole.

I saw my first energetic Audubon’s Warbler on a nearby branch…the yellow caught my eye.  I stopped.

High above me against a cloud-shrouded sky, three redtail hawks were screeching, diving, cutting across each other’s circles.  They were performing the age-old rituals that always announce the arrival of spring. I stopped.

Through the white trunks of an aspen grove I noted movement.  Four mule deer were up there in the protective cover.  Have you ever seen a mule deer’s ears?  They’re HUGE!  I stopped, they listened.

I heard a familiar sound of spring.  A chickadee calling, over and over and over, until suddenly, another chickadee flitted to a branch nearby. They flew off together.  I stopped.

These are my friends in the neighborhood.  We see each other almost everyday and I always stop.  I get something from them no amount of privacy can provide.  Someone told me once that people enjoy their privacy.  I think maybe they were wrong.