Jackson Wyoming Information - A Note from Jackson Hole

"Bring Back the Shoulder Season!"

There's a bumper sticker around town that says "Bring Back the Shoulder Season!" It laments the times, not too long ago, when Jackson Hole was nearly vacant of visitors in autumn and spring. Before those not-so-distant slack times there was another stretch, back in the 1950s and 60s, called The Cocktail Hour and it lasted from the end of hunting season to the summer day when the first tourists arrived. In order to combat cabin fever the locals gathered in the bars around noon and spun out the long afternoons and evenings over their cups, raveling and unraveling the same stories over and over, like rough Penelopes in wool shirts and boots, if you will. The Cocktail Hour lasted from three to five months and inspired a book by the same name. If you are interested in our "ancient" history the book is still in print and you can find it memorialized in those pages.

But, as the bumper sticker reminds us, those slack days are gone. The success of the ski resorts and the advent of the snow machine expanded the Cocktail Hour to a mass affair that finds woolly locals elbowed up to the bar next to slick folks from virtually everywhere else in the world. And, thank God, it has served to raise the number (and the quality) of their stories more than a few notches.

Also, the local promoters have conjured up events to fill several week ends. For the star-struck, there's the annual Connie Stevens charity ski affair. There is also the likes of the world championship snow machine hill climb, the famous elk antler auction and other events that draw crowds from afar. The Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce has all the particulars at (web site), if you are interested.

It used to be that Labor Day signaled the advent of the Fall shoulder season. The parents had to have their kids back to school around that time so the flood of tourists became a trickle in a very short time. Folks would suddenly find themselves standing out in front of their business establishments, gossiping with one another and lamenting the drastic drop in their incomes. But people started doing without kids, or bouncing from partner to partner like a pinball machine on automatic, and they began to linger into Autumn. And the secret was out-September and early October in Jackson Hole is, doubtless, our best time of the year. No crowds, warm days and cool nights, lower prices-and autumn in Wyoming's mountains.

The season slips in on tip toe and it's easy to miss the first little hints of change. The practiced eye will pick out the little scintillants of yellow which first flash among the green canopies of the Quaking aspen groves. The first little impulses of cold night air trigger a response in the most sensitive trees and they respond with a little gasp and a shiver that changes the daintiest leaves from green and silver to an 18-carat gold. Then, as the sun moves further south and the nights' cold starlight sprinkles down, more yellows, golds, and oranges are sifted among the trees. A confection for the eye, I look forward to the annual change and the delights of its color show.

But, for the locals, the real clarion call of the coming change is born in the blood of the bull elk as the fall rut begins. Hormones, triggered by the same impulses which conspire to lighten aspen leaves, turn the big animals' blood dark and spark a passion for breeding and battle. As dark descends on the pine groves the eerie, shrieking bugle of the bulls mix with the sound of their enormous antlers clashing in competition. It is at this time, in mid-to-late September, that we drive north into national parks and forests to take in the jousting for physical supremacy, with its attendant harem rights. The action happens mostly during the last gasp of day, in the twilit parks among the pine forests, but there are enough animals doing battle to afford a good look, and certainly a goose-bumpy listen. Quite a show. You shouldn't miss it.

So, if we can't bring back the shoulder season, and have it all to ourselves, c'mon out and join us. And welcome. As we say out here, "Hell, everybody's gotta be someplace."

-Jon Horton