Out West

living well and dressing without cosplay

I am writing this from Nantucket, which is another matter entirely and more on that later, but the contrast is useful. Out East, I know the codes. Out West, I’m a greenhorn.

I don’t think of trips as content, which is probably why I am so resistant to writing anything that resembles a comprehensive guide. The world does not need another guide to Jackson Hole, and I am certainly not qualified to write one, having spent a mere five days there and learned mostly that I am (probably) not (yet) an “Out West” person. It was beautiful, obviously, in the way places with enormous mountains tend to be beautiful, but I equate landlocked with claustrophobic, unending mountain vistas or not.

I went to Jackson Hole with my husband and daughter, my parents, and my brother and his wife. I liked the parts where we were all together and no one was asking what was for dinner because the answer had been outsourced to a reservation.

Trips, for me, are where life feels least algorithmic. You are dog tired, puffy, and mildly hungover. Someone always needs a snack. The weather is rarely what you packed for. Dinner is not as good as you hoped. Your husband injures himself in a way that will become family lore. You are forced, however briefly, to inhabit your own life instead of watching everyone else perform theirs. Texts are unanswered, Instagram is unopened, and emails about freight logistics are momentarily back of mind.

This is living well, I think, which is not synonymous with living ambitiously. I have been thinking, for reasons I will not get into, about envy and attention. People are triggered by other people’s happiness (or success, beauty, vacations, marriages, closets), and whatever else they have decided is evidence that the universe is unfair. Sometimes it is unfair. There is no dignity in standing at the edge of someone else’s life taking inventory. Living well is the best revenge. Tend to your own life. Book the trip if you can. Stay home beautifully if you can’t. Close your laptop. Stop feeding the thing that makes you cruel or unhappy.

Anyway, a brief field report (not a travel post, a relief to us all) of an unfit East Coaster with neither the qualifications nor the wardrobe to fit the part Out West.