Commuters include nurses, teachers, police, waiters, cooks, motel housekeepers, construction workers, landscapers, fishing and mountain guides, and salespeople. All are Jackson Hole’s economic lifeline.

On June 8, the highway over Teton Pass failed catastrophically, part of it collapsing into an impassable cliff of rubble. The failure made national news, and now you can spend hours on Facebook reading everyone’s opinions about what should be done. Calls for building a tunnel through the mountain are resurfacing, although the tunnel that was previously proposed would not have bypassed the section of road that failed. 

The Teton Pass highway is vital to Jackson’s functioning as a tourist mecca. In good conditions, driving the 24 miles from Victor to Jackson over Teton Pass takes about 35 minutes. Now, a detour means that workers have to drive roughly 85 miles to get to their jobs, adding about two hours to the daily commute.

Jackson town councilor and economist Jonathan Schechter estimates the road closure is costing the local economy roughly $600,000 a day, and he says that’s a conservative figure. Using IRS numbers for mileage reimbursement, the cost for drivers is $88 a day, while the mean hourly wage in Jackson is $40. Not only has the commute become nearly four times longer, but workers also have to put in an extra two hours to cover the cost of that drive time.

Jackson residents have responded to the crisis with compassion and financial aid. Homeowners have opened their houses in Jackson, and many are allowing people to pitch tents in their yards. Businesses are offering parking lot space for RVs. Teton County, Wyoming, eased its temporary shelter regulations, and the daily commuter bus altered its schedule and waived its fees until June 30 to accommodate riders.  The Teton Valley Community Foundation set up a fund that accepts donations for affected workers. I am sure there are many other services and resources as well.

But camping in Jackson means you aren’t going home after work. It means you may not see your children, partner or friends for days on end. It means you need to get someone to feed your dog or check in on your cat, horses, gardens or plants. It means you cannot enjoy the natural world—why most of us live here—because you’re driving a car.

Most of us have a love-hate relationship with Teton Pass. There’s an Instagram page called TetonPassholes, dedicated to showing people doing stupid things on the road. Most of the time it’s video clips of truckers ignoring the winter trailer ban; sometimes it’s pictures of people driving recklessly. We snarl and complain, but we still drive the road because it gets us where we need to go.

The average list price for a single-family home in Jackson reached $7.6 million at the end of 2022, according to the Jackson Hole Report. In the first months of 2024, 56 homes were on the market, with only three listed for less than $2 million.

In Victor, Idaho, the median price for homes was $537,000, an asking price that’s not reasonable for most working people. Housing is in short supply in Victor, too.

For years, affordable housing has been a hot-button topic on both sides of the pass, as well as an hour south of Jackson in booming Star Valley. Now that the funnel that allows Jackson to prosper has been blocked, we can see more clearly than ever that our current model—housing the rich in one town, workers in another—is not sustainable.

Wyoming Department of Transportation has indicated that it hopes to open a temporary bypass around the landslide in as little as two weeks. A long-term solution will undoubtedly take months, if not years. 

In the meantime, I hope our community leaders take this as a wake-up call and address the absolute need for workforce housing. A temporary patch will not address the crisis that this road failure has dramatized.

Molly Absolon is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit spurring lively conversation about the West. She is a writer in Idaho.

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To slow the steady march of musk thistle, a fast-spreading weed from Eurasia, we spend Thursday morning each week bending down to tackle these interlopers. We know what we do is a drop in the bucket, but right here, along this trail, we see results.

Joining Morgan is a mixed crew: native plant enthusiasts, elk hunters, employees of non-profits and the Forest Service, plus “youngsters” in their 30s and retirees like me.

My friend Mary, nearly 80, wins the prize as the oldest and most enthusiastic of the crew. While we were waiting for a friend at a trailhead this summer, she spotted a musk thistle on a steep slope, went to her car for some gloves and signaled for me to follow. “Let’s get that one,” she said. We ended up uprooting several.  

Musk thistle (Carduus nutans) is an invasive weed, and like many invasive plants, it is adaptable and vigorous, producing prolific seeds. It competes for light and nutrients with native plants. Eventually, it can replace them.

To be fair, it has positive qualities. Bees, butterflies and other pollinators are attracted to its magenta flowers, and it blooms later than many native wildflowers, extending the season for insects. Songbirds eat its seeds.

But wildlife and livestock won’t eat musk thistle because of its spines. Where it grows, grazing animals must forage more heavily on other plants, reducing their vigor, which allows musk thistle to invade ever more space.

Tackling a stand of musk thistle requires determination. All flowers and buds are removed and placed in bags or bins. The plant, a long-lived biennial, must be cut off below the base, or pulled, to prevent further blooming.

All of us volunteers are suited up in protective gear that includes heavy gloves, long sleeves and sturdy boots. The work is hard, but the hours go quickly with conversation, laughter and impromptu contests to see who can pull out the largest thistle without tools.

We talk about plant ecology in general, but one question often comes up: “What makes it a weed?” Simply put, a plant is a weed if doesn’t belong where it’s growing. But as humans, we’re inconsistent.

To a farmer dependent on crops for a living, a weed is any plant, native or otherwise, that competes with the crop. To a hand spinner of wool, the invasive and noxious tansy is welcome for its rich golden dye. To a rancher whose cattle or sheep forage on public land, tall larkspur and several members of the pea family, all native plants, should be sprayed, for they are toxic.

We also pull out other invasives such as Canada thistle, hound’s tongue, salsify, toadflax and knapweed. Despite our best efforts, these plants are flourishing. As we work, it’s fun when bicyclists whizzing by yell out “thank you!”, though some shake their heads. “You’re pissing in the wind,” one called.

But before-and-after photographs show that our hours of work make a difference. There is satisfaction in seeing the beds of two pickup trucks filled with bags of musk thistle blossoms.

Part of me admits that I’m not making a huge difference, but a bigger part is glad I have done my little bit for however long its effects may last. My Thistle Thursday friends agree.

That’s why we keep coming back. It’s a way to say, “I’m just going to enjoy my life for as long as it lasts.” Pulling weeds and filling buckets with their flowers is a lot like tending a garden at home. We’re just tending a larger garden, the Eden we all inherited.

Most of all, we’re expressing what is perhaps the most precarious of human sentiments these days: Hope.

Susan Marsh is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring conversation about the West. She is a naturalist and writer for Mountain Journal, which covers Yellowstone’s wildlife, wild lands and culture. A longer version of this opinion appeared in mountainjournal.org.

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Learning the Old West code was easy decades ago. Novelist Zane Gray’s “Code of the West” told men to wear a hat only outdoors, to never wave but nod at someone on horseback, and to treat women with chivalry. You — and you were always presumed to be male — were also advised to take your gun belt off before sitting down to eat.

But here we are in 2022, and from what county officials and some jaundiced newcomers tell me, the cultural confusion for newcomers almost always starts with private property. For example, the newbies tend to get huffy about their boundaries and can’t believe they have to fence livestock out.

Wyoming, of course, is a classic fence-out state where cows outnumber people more than 2 to 1. Irrigation is another area of contention, as water law can be murky. A ditch may run close to your property but that doesn’t mean you can take water out of it.

To make the urban-rural transition easier, I’ve collected 10 tips guaranteed to ease you into your new life. But first, know that you will never become an oldtimer, although with patience you might become what Western historian Hal Rothman dubbed a “neo-native.” Here’s hoping this helps:

1. Always wave at neighbors when you see them and make eye contact with everyone who passes you, either in a car or on foot. This is not a challenge; it means you’re neighborly. And be cordial to everyone you see at the post office because you will see them everywhere. You may even see their dual personas, as many locals must work two or even three jobs to pay the rent. 

2. Never go for a long hike with new boots. Take enough water and food for yourself and to share. Bring a rain jacket and sweater and waterproof matches. The saying “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes,” is dead-on accurate. And when someone on a hike assures you that “it’s all downhill,” it’s only partially uphill. “A little technical” means the mountain has hair-raising sections, while “just around the corner” means the end of the trail is not.

3. Realize that nobody is more important than anybody else. Rich and poor may sport raggedy clothes. Notable figures in town are probably dogs; learn their names.

4. Know that it’s considered rude to insult a person’s dog, but if it comes on your land and harasses your cattle, you can shoot the dog. If your dog chases wildlife, you’re in for a big fine and maybe worse.

5. Flashing your headlights to oncoming cars is good form if there’s a hazard ahead, usually a deer, or perhaps a deputy sheriff trolling for speeders.

6. Notice that law enforcement people are not the only people carrying guns, and a gun on the hip doesn’t necessarily indicate political party.

7. Always stop to help people on a trail or road because federal agencies are spread too thin for fast rescues. Locals would stop to help you, even if your hat logo fails to reflect their politics.

8. You might be bored senseless, but you will learn what local public service is all about if you sample meetings from school board to county commission. And immediately volunteer at a nonprofit or two, while also subscribing to your local paper if you’re lucky enough to have one.

9. Clean jeans are considered dress-up.

10. Forego saying you’re pretty good at something unless you have a death wish. For example, in Durango, Flagstaff or Jackson, saying you’re a “good” mountain biker or skier is an invitation to be politely left behind at midday.

Bonus tip: If you think about buying a house next to a yard full of old farm implements, don’t be tempted. That yard collection is permanent. Complaining, however, rarely works in the rural place you’ve adopted. A painful lesson might be that like it or not, you can only change yourself. Wagon wheels are always a safe decoration.

Dave Marston is the publisher of Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He grew up in rural Colorado.

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