Travel journal from Wednesday 27 September

"The Tetons.

Picture a high plateau, high sagebrush desert, flat and dusty and colored uninterupted with sage. High desert. In the fall, like now, a band of yellowing aspens and cottonwoods lines the banks of the Snake River twisting through the tawny landscape. The trees extend perhaps 20 meters on either side of the Snake, then the dominant sagebrush returns. The flat plateau continues and suddenly crashes into the Teton Range. There are no preliminaries, no foothills, just a sudden 6,000 foot rise to the craggy Grand Teton. The peaks are snow capped, or snow-dusted, for lines of rocks like spines run grey and graninte down the range.

I live in the shadow of the Swiss Alps, but these are the landscapes that swell my lungs and square my shoulders, these sudden changing landscapes blending together on this high plateau. It is the contrasts that capture my heart. Or perhaps it is simply that we love best the things that we loved first."