Making the Point: Long Walks & Leaps of Faith

Hermitage Point Trail

Grand Teton National Park

10 miles round-trip, moderate

We've traveled this trail before. The first time was on a temperate August day three years ago-- a day lifted from a postcard picture, a day blessed with unpolluted blue skies and cumulus cloud-scuttled optimism. Today will be different. The Berry Fire has been burning in the northwestern corner of the park since late July-- a pesky, lightning-ignited, shape-shifting conflagration that has at once confounded prognosticators and re-routed Highway 89 tourist traffic between Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. This August morning, the not-so-distant wildfire seems to be conspiring with a capricious breeze as it blankets the late-summer landscape and our intended hiking route with a smoke-silver wood-char haze.

Smoke from the Berry Fire, August 2016.

Our trek begins on an old service road that skirts the southern shore of Colter Bay. Boats of various shape and size and color bob in steel-blue morning waters. We hear the putt-putt-sputter of outboard motors kicking into service, propelling day-adventurers outward on glacial-carved, dam-enhanced Jackson Lake.

A Bit of the Earth Beneath Our Feet, Hermitage Point Trail.

We are embarking upon a long walk, to be sure: ten miles round-trip, if various hiking guides and online sources are to be trusted. We remember it as a rolling stroll with a modest give-and-take of elevation. The trail will take us across and through a variety of quintessential Wyoming terrain and habitat: forest, meadow, wetland, and lakeshore with incomparable mountain views.

Pelican Pair, Jackson Lake.

We fold a trail map and tuck it in a pocket. While the way is well-marked with prominent signage, we remember numerous junctions and forks and convolutions and connectors. It's a hike that begs the question again and again: Where do you want to go? A park-issued brochure will help answer both practical and existential questions....

Jackson Lake Overlook: Not Pictured, Jackson Lake.

Before long, aforementioned trail signage poses one of these queries: do we prefer a short, steep-climb detour to Jackson Lake Overlook, or a straight, flat continuation of the main trail? High or low? Effort or ease? More or less? Three years ago, we decided to go high, making the effort, more or less. The viewpoint offered a pleasing albeit misnomered prospect, an elevated peek at Teton peaks jutting skyward over lake-obscuring treeline. On that day, we made a visual leap of faith: we could not see Jackson Lake, but we trusted that an earlier generation of wanderers enjoyed the view before trees overgrew the overlook. Today, cognizant of smoke and a limited point of view, we stay low, continuing on the main trail.

Clear Morning, Heron Pond.

The Jackson Lake Overlook detour rejoins the main trail just before Heron Pond, where several unofficial foot paths lead to water's edge. A sharp-eyed otter slips through shallows of the pond, his whiskered face surveilling us as we surveil him; in a flash, his sinuous form dips below the surface in breathless retreat to inscrutable aquatic domain.

Smoky Morning, Heron Pond.

Floating Flora, Heron Pond.

This is a place of macro and micro beauty. On that clear day three years ago, we took in panoramic views of Mt. Moran and Rockchuck Peak beyond the pond. On this smoky morning, we appreciate flowering lilies and beaver lodges on the water and dew-bedazzled grass, gnarled driftwood, and delicate wildflowers along the shoreline.

Late-Season Wildflowers, Heron Pond Shoreline.

Horseback Party, Heron Pond.

Today, too, we are joined by a gregarious party on horseback. The cheerful dissonance of light conversation and the clump-clump-clump-clump of hooves carve through morning air and answer another existential question: Wherefore all this horse manure on the trail?

Shoreline Rock Garden, Heron Pond.

Through the Forest.

After departing Heron Pond, we pass through several miles of forest, a fairly dense amalgamation of lodgepole pine, spruce, and fir. This stretch of trail is view-challenged on the clearest of days: on a smoky morning, fire haze drapes the woods, reducing visibility and subduing sound. Measured breathing, footfall, and the click-clack of hiking stick tapping rock-strewn earth are what we hear.

Panoramic View, Hermitage Point Trail.

In time, the mixed-conifer forest yields to more open landscape, a windswept golden meadow dotted with restless sagebrush. Three years ago, our pace quickened as the trail offered ever-more expansive views of Jackson Lake and of the Teton Range splayed across the western horizon. Today, we move more slowly. The world beyond this meadow presents itself as a featureless silver-haze cyclorama, disorienting and dramatic.

Silver-Haze Horizon, Hermitage Point Trail.

We arrive at the end of the peninsula-- a sweeping, exposed pebble beach known as Hermitage Point. Indeed, this is the point of the hike: the moment when the trail fulfills its promise of a secluded, scenic retreat, a place miles removed from the crowds and the commerce of the Colter Bay parking area.

Hermitage Point, August 2013.

On a clear-sky day, the view is stunning, authentically beautiful. Mount Moran rises abruptly from the far lakeshore, its distinctive glaciers and basalt intrusion tipping the blue-blue sky. There are drifting clouds and graceful arcs of waterfowl in flight, all reflected in rippling waters of Jackson Lake.

Hermitage Point, August 2016.

Today, the scene is surreal, an otherworldly loveliness. With apologies to heavy metal rock band Deep Purple, there is considerable Smoke on the Water. We snack on raisins and pretzels and chocolate, considering the distant fire in the sky. We hear waves lapping against the shoreline, the muffled putter of an outboard motor lost on the leaden lake. We see a familiar island in silhouette. Time for another visual leap of faith: we cannot see the mountains, but we know they're out there.

The Scene That We've Seen, Hermitage Point.

Third Creek.

Our return begins along the southeastern side of the peninsula, alternating passages through forest with crossings of sagebrush meadow, At the crest of a rise on the trail, we startle a pair of crimson-capped sandhill cranes: they stop us in our earthbound tracks with their rolling call and their rushed, elegant flight.

Swan, Appropriately, at Swan Lake.

We pass through marshy ground near Third Creek and along the narrow shoreline of Swan Lake before retracing our opening steps along the south side of Colter Bay.

Swan Lake Reflection, August 2013.

Our two visits to Hermitage Point were both pleasant and rewarding. Over time, we will undoubtedly reminisce about the hikes individually; however, there is something to be gained by considering them in tandem. We remember the clarity of mountain and blue sky reflected in sparkling water-- and the opacity of smoke and fire on a late-summer landscape. We think about the essential interplay between earth and air and fire and water, elemental forces of creation, sustenance, destruction, and regeneration. We embrace the sameness, the difference; the seen and the unseen; the known and the unknowable... on two long walks that encourage us to exercise stewardship and care, faithfulness to what we see, and faith in all that we cannot see. 

Day's End at Colter Bay, Grand Teton National Park.