Happy Anniversary, Jackson
feed reed celebrates living in Wyoming by eating hot wings with Joey, contemplating the meaning of suffering, and all the times I've almost met God.
Four years later I am surprisingly still alive, still in Jackson, and at The Bird. A true local’s joint. A Type II kind of restaurant. It’s a no-frills, get your-own-fucking-water joint. I wanted to suffer in pursuit of pleasure. I wanted hot wings.
hard living
December 21st, 2025 marked four years of living in Jackson. Twenty-one more years and I can call myself a local. On my first anniversary I absent mindedly found myself at Wing Night at The Bird. I had just quit my job at the newspaper, signed up to be a ski instructor and broke my leg on the first day of work. I was vegetarian then, but also had FOMO, so my new roommates hauled me and my crutches to Wing Night. That winter, five months, was spent on the couch recovering and trying not to go insane, trapped on the third floor of my apartment.
I don’t regret skiing. I do think it’s the highest risk sport with the lowest reward, second only to whitewater kayaking. It’s Type II fun and that’s what brought us all to Jackson, a Type II kind of town. There is a pain and pleasure of living here. These feelings hold each of our hands and swing us back and forth. It’s hard living here when rent is due. It’s hard when Ron’s Towing steals your car overnight. It’s hard when you have to move twice a year. And I still love being here, all things considered. There is no honor in suffering, but there is pride to be had in the hard work it takes to create a life for oneself in an inhospitable environment.
My second anniversary came around and I was eating meat again. I’d celebrate at Wing Night with my new, new roommates. The following spring I’d get broken up with via facetime. I’d take that anniversary off my calendar. The 5-year-plan was to move back to the South where the people say y’all and living was easy, but then, covered in tears and Buffalo sauce, I had an unexpected no-year-plan. Jackson’s got me for the foreseeable future.
The hand of pain gave me bike wrecks, inch-deep wounds, labral tears, slipped disks, two failed dating attempts, and four dead relatives and a 6mm tumor growing toward my carotid artery. The hand of pleasure gave me new teaching opportunities, deep abiding friendships, a debut photobook, and some damn good food. The universe never let me have two good days in a row, but it still gave me plenty.
the first time I almost met God
The anesthesiologist pegged me for a stereotypical male in his 20’s. Resistant to anesthesia, slower to react, needs a higher dosage. He pumped anesthetic into my IV. I felt ice shoot up my right arm and smack me in the face. My heart rate plummeted to an agonal 20 beats per minute. After I woke up he told me, “we almost lost ya!” with a casual laugh. I thought it strange he would say that. I thought it strange he didn’t ask about my low blood pressure, or natural resting heart rate of 40 beats per minute before juicing me up. It would have saved him a lot of sugammadex and me a lot of money. Despite his near fatal fuck up, he did pull me back from the pearly gates. The blinding lights I saw were the Vanderbilt operating room lights and not God. Maybe next time.
the bird
There are no reservations and you seat yourself. Bulldog diners bark at each other from booth to booth. A stream of headlights trickle down Teton Pass from the back deck on warm summer nights. A large circular table has a silver pole in the center and they do not specify if it was for firefighting or stripping purposes. Regardless, it filled me with a sense of stability. Of all the restaurant About Pages I read theirs speaks to me to most:
“We’ve got a strong personality; we’re not shy about that. If you’re interested in robotic service and syncopated plate drops, we’re probably not for you. We won’t be scraping your crumbs between courses, but we’ll throw you a towel if you spill your drink. Then we’ll give you a new one on the house.”
The Bird’s menu has bar food staples. It has subtext. Diners will not find foie gras on their burgers. They find a burger called the Polish Lawnmower which is fucking funny. They’d be happy to accommodate your gluten allergy, but will up-charge if you also order a beer. The personality of the place is written on the menu. The Bird speaks to its diners bluntly through the food. The Bird represents a Jackson-ethos of Type II fun. Pain and pleasure rub shoulders in the food. The Wings section surgically outlined the 28 different flavor and heat combinations available. It includes a disclaimer, “no refunds for wimps.” At the end of the list lies their most offensive offering. Six Carolina Reaper wings called the Meet God wings. To celebrate four years of hard living in Jackson, my seventh roommate Joey and I ordered the hottest wings in Teton County. If only to say we tried to meet God.
the second time I almost met God
Now-defunct, Rocky’s Bar was the third diviest bar in town. The first being Whiskey River where someone got shot inside. The second was our neighboring bar, Three Brothers, where someone was always on the verge of being shot inside. Rocky’s was a beautiful refuge for misfits and the misunderstood. For the service workers and fake-IDs. We had a free pool table, ping pong, cigarettes inside and a television dedicated to Mortal Kombat. There were no stall doors in the men’s room so if one were to indulge in their preferred upper, a homie would have to hold the main door closed. Everyone was a regular, everyone was a friend. Patrons were as deeply flawed as we were loving. A sweet young couple would come in and play pool with each other for hours. I’d served them for years. The husband approached the bar one night and handed me a dime bag of a suspicious white crystalline substance. He said he found it under the table and wanted to turn it in, with an innocence of returning someone’s lost keys. Our charm and community did not excuse just how illegal the whole operation was. We had a liquor license and that was about it.
The bar closed at 2 a.m. I counted my tips and closed the drawer. I was photographing a 24-hour project at the time. After mopping the floor I took out the trash, camera in hand. I schlepped the leaky bag into the graffiti-covered dumpster. I look across the parking lot and saw a silhouette in the street light. He leaned into an idling car before he raised himself out of the passenger side window and raised a gun. He fires five shots into the vehicle before it peels away. He turned in my direction and can rightfully assume one of two things:
I had a strange black object in my hands that may also be a gun.
He saw it was a camera and I may have taken his picture committing a crime.
Both assumptions would require him to dispose of me in the Rocky’s dumpster. Luckily he chose the secret third option and ran away. A morbid curiosity washed over me and I walked toward the light pole he shot. I saw some shell casings. I saw the blinding street lamp. I did not see God.
almost our last supper
Joey and I bellied up to the bar. He’s on a mission. I offer him numerous chances to bail, but he insists. He does not handle spice well, but he handles suffering well. Joey’s a mountain athlete like no other. His lanky frame and humility disguises his sheer strength and unimaginable capacity to endure. In a town obsessed with alpine accolades and ego, Joey has all the former and none of the latter. I will never climb Aconcagua, Denali, or Mt. Hood like he has, but he will eat hot wings with me, and I’m not sure which one he’d say was worse.
6:30pm: Joey locks eyes with Riely, the bartender, and ordered two plates of Meet God wings. Six each. A 24oz Pacifico with lime was my lifeline and numbing agent for the next 40 miserable minutes.
The active ingredient in bear spray are capsaicinoids which are the same compounds in this wing sauce. The Bird does not put bear spray in the sauce, rather bear spray companies turn hot sauce into an aerosol. The naturally-occurring oils we use to fight off 600lb killing machines is the same stuff we’re about to willingly put in our bodies.
6:35pm: The wings arrived unceremoniously. A white plate has three wings and three drumsticks. Flanking the bright orange bombs are carrots of the same hue, a few sticks of celery, and ranch. None of which would save our damned souls. A brief inhale was enough to flood our noses with capsaicinoids, triggering coughs immediately. These poor bears, just shoot me. Joey and I rushed through the first wing knowing speed was our only hope. The spice set in like a sunburn. I was lulled into a sense of security, surprised by how good it tasted in the first 45 seconds. Then, hell fire rained down on my tongue, lips, and face. The pain was exponential and this quirky fun idea turned into a bad idea that had no silver lining. I started and had to finish. I may be a son of a bitch, but I ain’t no bitch of a son. At least on wing #1.
6:40pm: The spice level had reached a cruising altitude of unimaginable pain. I figured I’ve peaked and I can plow through the remaining four wings. I made the mistake of resetting the tongue with carrots and beer, but each time I cooled down I had to restart the experience with each wing. Joey and I called an audible and left the garnishes and beer for recovery instead of midgame relief.
6:45pm: I was very wrong about the pain plateau. The sauce functioned like napalm. It adhered and burned everything it touched. It coated my mustache, beard, and surrounding skin. The table was filled with napkins sticky with sauce, snot and a lot of tears. There were only eight other people at the bar watching us cry and snivel over our plates. We were only halfway through.
6:50pm: A light glimmered at the bottom of my Pacifico as I pleaded with a merciful God to end my suffering. Joey was drowning in tears and quit after wing #3. Deliverance lay before me. Wings four and five were stripped in rapid succession. A pile of carrots and room temperature fries were waiting for me on the other side.
7:00pm: The sixth and final wing was a Flat. Flats were the easiest to eat because I could put the whole wing in the pie hole without lathering my lips and mustache in magma. I clenched my teeth around the base to grip it and rip it. It was finally over.
7:10pm: Joey experienced heart palpitations throughout the night, but was enjoying a burger to clear his palate. I polished off the carrots, fries, and another 24oz Pacifico to douse the inferno. Reily the bartender was not necessarily impressed, but was mildly surprised I’d finished. Actually, nobody cared. I sat belly up, staring into the stained glass lampshades above. This was Type III fun. It was not fun during, it will be painful after, and won’t be repeated. There was no honor in our suffering.
the third time I almost met God
It was past 10pm when I was driving down I-15 through Salt Lake on my way to Durango, Colorado. BYU had just demolished Arizona 41-19 at home. There wasn’t a vacant hotel for miles. My phone was dying and I needed to find a place to stop for the night. I’d already stopped at three hotels with no vacancy. As traffic flowed over a bridge, a U-Haul trailer merged right with a truck in his blind spot. The truck swerved into a sedan to avoid collision, sending the both of them spinning. I was close behind the three swirling tea-cups, squinting at astigmatized headlights. A quick glance in my rearview mirror showed nobody was behind me, so I swerved my way through the lanes of high velocity Mormons towards the shoulder. Bumpers and glass littered the overpass and traffic came to a halt behind us. Another driver and I exited our cars to clear the roadway. He blocked traffic as I checked on the three wrecked vehicles. They were all full of unscathed passengers. There was nothing much I could do. Emergency personnel were in sight, everyone was shaken but unharmed. I had to go to bed. The last hotel I found had one room left. It was a deluxe king suite for $300, but I had no other options or phone battery left to find something better. I went to bed that night staring into the bright light of my phone, having missed God and Joseph Smith.
not my time
It’s not that I want to meet God. From skiing, to rock climbing, to hiking in bear country, the opportunities abound. It’s not that I want to leave Jackson. With rent hikes, harsh winters, and being so far from home, the reasons to leave are plenty. The lifestyle is Type II kind of fun. Things ain’t been easy over the last four years, but the challenges have been rewarding at best, and educational at worst. Jackson is a transient place because it’s a tough place to be. I’ll move along eventually. For now, it’s not my time.
It’s hard living, but worth it. The wings were not.
Those were painful and I would like to never have those again. 36 hours since eating the final wing and Joey’s heart was still irregular and my stomach still felt like I drank bear spray. I’ll opt for the mild Sesame Ginger next time.