Snow Squall and the Sleeping Indian

In March 2024 I was lucky enough to stay in Wilson near Jackson Hole and travel to the Teton Mountain Range to ski for just over a week. I am a novice skier with only a few years experience since I have been fifty but I have a deep passion for it despite my age. The journey to the ski slopes was often full of traffic, crawling at a snails pace and during the week twice I saw a moose on the road. I hadn’t realised how vast they can be; in Elizabeth Bishop’s words “towering, antlerless, high as a church, homely as a house (or, safe as houses).” In my woodcut the moose does have antlers and while it’s not “sniffing the hot hood” of a bus, it is behind a snow plough pickup. A woman, still in her nightgown and socks, retreats on a snowbank from the danger on the road. The Sleeping Indian is an imposing double headed mountain that rises behind Jackson Hole. It reminds any passer-by of a previous world where the landscape of Wyoming was home to such a rich society of native peoples. When we come across animals as vast as these creatures on our daily commute, they stop us in our tracks, a jungian phenomenon of great subliminal emotional power that Bishop pivots her whole poem around. “Why, why do we feel (we all feel) this sweet sensation of joy?” - TH

Excerpts taken from The Moose by Elizabeth Bishop