This website is great because its forcing me to keep track of each day both in writing an in pictures…but it sure is difficult to stay on top of it especially if there is little to no internet connection. We had a little last night so I was up until almost 2am going through pictures, attempting to make sense of the science and update the information from Yellowstone.
We had planned on waking up early this morning to watch the sunrise. 1) because we really wanted to watch a sunrise in the Grand Tetons, but mainly because 2) my grandmother will have passed away a month ago this morning. We knew it was going to be a hard day for my mom and we thought it would be a great day to get up early and watch the sun rise. I’m glad we did, but boy was I tired after going to bed late. It’s not that I’m not a morning person, but to watch the sunrise is always a little harder for me because you have to set your alarm and force yourself awake while its still dark. It also doesn’t help when you wake up and its a solid 28 degrees. But we did it. Set the alarm for 6am, got the kids up, layered on clothes and walked out to the second little peninsula near Colter Bay. It wasn’t the most amazing sunrise, there was still cloud coverage in the sky, but once you motivate and get out there it does always feel good to be awake early.
Sunrise was supposed to be around 7:04, but the clouds weren’t cooperating. My mom busily started collecting rocks and we began building a lovely little rock shrine. This is not an unusual thing for my mom or us to do…rock therapy is definitely a thing in our family. It kept us busy as we were waiting for the sun to peek through. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned in all my posts that going through my grandmother’s death was easily the most spiritual experience I have been through. We started sharing things about my grandmother to each other and then a giant black raven came swooping around from the trees, right over head, and then back into the trees. The sun kept trying to pop through, but whenever we thought it would it would be covered again…but amazingly right around 8:29am when my grandmother had passed away the sun came out and shown on the rocks. But the rocks we were building only, the Tetons at that point were covered in clouds.
Another beautiful moment in the sadness and I’m so happy my mom came out here with us. She’s had genuine smiles this week and although I know her mom is never far from her thoughts at this time, I feel as though she’s been able to step away from the grief she is feeling.
