A Love Letter to the Wilds

By Megan Crawford

camp on the Colorado River, Kodak Ektar, Hasselblad

by Megan Crawford

My dear friend, you’ve changed (as have I)— I remember when my favorite form of yours was the sea. Of course, I always loved the rising waves that would carry me up from the sand, but my favorite part of the sea was always the scent— salt, aloe, brine. That hasn’t changed; I still categorize a sense of place by a sense of smell.

This is why I’ve come to love your forests the most (why would wet soil smell so nice, otherwise). The counter to the forest— the desert— is a more elusive fondness. There’s nothing like sun-soaked Sagebrush on a welcome breeze, and the same goes for the rogue Juniper tree. While I’m not necessarily built for the brutality of your deserts, I can appreciate your work (the rocks especially).

It’s nice to revisit the familiar spaces— Yellowstone has always been a talisman. Eight, eighteen, and again at twenty-six. I’ll be sure to go back for a twenty-year reunion; I wouldn’t miss your eggy sulfur air for the world.

The Tetons were another almost twenty-year reunion, but I swear I don’t remember seeing them then (I apologize— it’s my memory, not your mountains. I don’t think I’d ever be allowed to forget seeing the Tetons for the first time). You were swathed in smoke— again, apologies— but still just as sublime. I’m glad Lauren and I had our first go at painting plein-air at the base of your mountains there. The Lodgepoles and Aspens of the Tetons are a welcome change from the rotten eggs of Yellowstone, but that’s nostalgic at this point, so you can get away with it.

Your deserts— I think they’re why I keep rewriting this. I know how to talk about your forests and mountains because I’ve lived among them for a while now. Your deserts, though, are a riddle.

The clear opposite of hallowed woods; arid, hot, shadeless, relentless. A floor of fissures— again, the opposite of the mountains, at least in direction. What I’ve yet to get out of my brain is the sheer technicolor of your deserts. I’m used to a blanket of grays, greens, and blues. There’s something magic about rust-earth clay.

Canyonlands, watercolor

by Megan Crawford

I am also accustomed to the stars of your northern skies.

I know where to turn for Orion, for Ursa Major and Minor, but your deserts are so wildly pinpricked with stars that you can hardly tell them apart. They’re like spilled salt. I would have sat outside and watched them if it weren’t for your propensity for odd nocturnal creatures (I am very okay with living with grizzlies instead of scorpions, thank you). That, and I left my glasses in our tent, so maybe my nearsightedness aided your stars. But even with my shoddy eyesight, you were still beautiful.

Dead Horse Point, watercolor

by Megan Crawford

Which then brings me to your desert sunrises— once again, similar but different from your mountains. This is the one that trips me up the most. I have seen a plethora of sunrises in my days, and while my memory is practically a piece of Swiss cheese at this point, I can still remember a sunrise of yours in Bryce Canyon when I was seventeen. I know that the sunrise Lauren and I watched at Dead Horse Point will be the same. Sun spilling like honey, light like gauze between the hills, the Potash pools glowing in the dark canyon below. How quiet your deserts are. How loud their color is. How sweet sagebrush is under your light.

Even still, I am used to old mountains— sleeping giants, carved for time immemorial. Your younger mountains are wholly different, reckless, unpredictable. The Aspen groves of these younger mountains are a crown jewel of yours, even if we weren’t there for your Autumn. There’s something so sharply sweet about an Aspen— mint, citrus, soil? I haven’t pinned it down yet; in due time.

We camped the most in your younger mountains, 9,100' at the highest, where the air begins to grow thin and crisp. Air above your treeline is like a punch to the lungs, but in a nice way, you know? Like you’re breathing, really breathing, for the first time.

Yellowstone, watercolor

by Megan Crawford

I did have a favorite set of mountains— I will always love Glacier and the Tetons, the southern Rockies around Ouray, but you’ve truly done it with the Wind Rivers. All of them, every inch.

Lauren and I drove up to the Wind Rivers in the tail-end of a storm under a boiling sky. Everything was constantly shifting in color, form, light— every crest showed us something unexpected. Light hit everything so perfectly; it’s no wonder I loved them so swiftly.

I will forgive you for sending out a rogue Loon onto Louis Lake, just at the start of twilight, when I’m at my most skittish. The echoing yowls kept me humble, so thank you for that. I half-excepted some sort of looming creature to snatch me out of my car before I could fill out our campsite form, but you instead gifted me a duck (your sense of humor can be questionable at times, Wilds).

Louis Lake, Kodak Ektar, Hasselblad

by Megan Crawford

Your Wind Rivers lived up to their name with a windstorm that felt like we were in a snow globe. Waves of air, swooping down from the peaks like a hawk, only to find a glass lake in the morning. Again, I live where your lakes are almost as common as puddles, but this one was different. An unassuming lake, no aquamarine glacial silt, no painted stones, no towering peaks on its shore. Just a quiet body of water, nestled in the trees, existing.

I will say, though— none of this would have been the same if I’d traveled with anyone other than Lauren. For this, I will always be grateful for you, Wilds, as I’m sure you are what brought both of us out to Montana in the first place. You carried both of us for thousands of miles to the heart of your Rockies. Our first trip together was to Yellowstone: new, bright-eyed college students, excited that one of us had a car and the other had a park pass that wasn’t expired. You again carried us along this trip, bounding, welcoming us.

Words are still indefinite, and I think it’s because you’ve gifted us something inexplicable. Every now and then, maybe only once in a lifetime, you’re gifted a friendship that reaches beyond what we can comprehend. But, Wilds, I know you understand (it’s your doing, anyway). Sometimes things are better left as they are, unexplained, in all their sweetness and wonder.

Delicate Arch, watercolor

by Megan Crawford

MEGAN CRAWFORD is the owner, editor, & designer of Montana Woman Magazine and also the proud owner of a beloved pair of sweatpant overalls.

Great Sand Dunes

by Megan Crawford