This family leveled up together with wildflowers, a moose, and a thunderstorm.
“Do we have to?” asked my 10- and 13-year-old boys. They wished they’d stayed back at their cousins’ house to play video games like their younger sister. My reply: “This was my family’s favorite hike growing up; you might just like it.”
My husband, Garon Sandall (BS ’96, MEM ’96), three boys, and I were about to climb Table Mountain (11,111 feet) in the Grand Tetons of Wyoming.
I pondered back on my youthful memories of this hike: the moose we always ran into in its bog, the brilliant meadow of wildflowers up by the saddle where sometimes the snow became too deep to pass, the time my brother and I dragged my teenage friend up the last 300 yards because we wouldn’t let her stop just shy of the “table” over- looking the massive Grand Teton. It always feels like you could just reach out and touch that biggest peak, though they say it’s a mile away.
Sure enough, when my family reached the mud bog, there grazed my old moose friend (probably that moose friend’s grandson by now). My 16-year-old son’s eyes bugged out as he realized the trail passed about 30 yards from that huge, chomping moose. No longer would we think the sign on the bedroom door of our 13-year- old was funny: “Beware of attack moose.”
Once past the wildflowers and saddle (free of snow!), my 10-year-old suddenly crumpled down onto the ground near random patches of purple-headed weeds. My heart seized for a moment as I asked, “What’s wrong?!” He answered, “I don’t know, but I can’t keep going.”
The altitude was probably getting to him. I pulled out a bag of grapes and coaxed him up the rest of the steep incline (really, this is a hike where you can’t just stop 300 yards from that tantalizing table).
We soon found ourselves on the table top, drinking, chomping ham sandwiches, and enjoying a rare, almost unimaginable view.
“This is better than a video game!”
I believe my sons felt something similar to what I felt: a triumphal pump from transcending some- thing tough despite bone weariness. To be a stone’s throw from what feels like one of God’s great- est creations. Wanting to shout, “I did it!” one moment, then the next moment, reverencing ourselves enough to sing together a hymn—as my childhood family did—“High on a Mountain Top” (Hymns, no. 5).
As we turned to head back down, we noticed dark, roiling clouds headed our way: ah yes, the usual afternoon thunderstorm that once found teenage me in a perilous predicament, with lightning all around, nothing higher than us—human lightning rods! But alas, I live to tell this tale.
Perhaps it was the thrilling threat of the impending clouds, or the exhilaration of having lunched at the awe-inspiring table, but here, a miracle happened: my 13-year-old son shouted out, “This is better than a video game!”
Indeed, we’d passed through the Crazy Moose Bog, the Blooming Wildflower Saddle, and the Life-Sucking Purple Weed Plateau (with grapes as the power boost). Then we transcended the Treacherous Last 300 Yards to the table, where we’d snapped celebratory photos on top of the world looking down on creation. Only now we were headed toward our biggest challenge yet: Ominous Flaming Balls on a Path of Destruction!
My husband and I paused and gave the boys a choice: “We can bypass the moose bog, and instead of the North Teton Trail of 7 miles back, we can run down the Face Trail at a shorter 4 miles.” Obviously, they chose the Face Trail. We leapt like Mario and Luigi down the steep path, over felled trees, and through washes and scraggly bushes. We donned blue raincoats upon the delightful deluge, and despite my aching knees in that last mile of skirting and scrambling, we finally descended upon the mighty castle—er, car.
Back at the cousins’ house, the boys talked over, and over each other, about how their 7-year-old sister should have come on the “best hike ever!”
Shiree Sandall is a writer of words and music who enjoys the outdoors and family time.
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In Letters from Home Y Magazine publishes essays by alumni about family-life experiences—as parents, spouses, grandparents, children. Essays should be 700 words and written in first-person voice. Y Magazine will pay $350 for essays published in Letters from Home. Send submissions to lettersfromhome@byu.edu.
