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The Grand Tetons held sway over me for 20 years — before I set ever eyes on them.

The breathtaking backdrop for a mythic American landscape has been etched on my consciousness since, as a 10-year-old, I sat mesmerized by a Saturday matinee showing of "Shane," an archetypal little-guy-versus-bully story.

And the Jackson Hole, Wyo., landscape, personified by the overpowering Tetons, is as essential a character as any in the 1953 film. The homesteading Starretts (Jean Arthur, Van Heflin and Brandon de Wilde as Joey), helped by the loner Shane (Alan Ladd), had to battle that formidable country as desperately as they did the cattlemen, the Rykers and their gunman Jack Wilson (Jack Palance). So beautiful but so harsh, it is the sort of West that Wallace Stegner once described as "the native home of hope."

Teton Range and Jackson Hole, just south of Yellowstone in Wyoming's northwest corner, haven't changed much from the 1880s, when the story of "Shane" took place. Grand Teton National Park was designated in 1929 and expanded in 1950, in part through a donation of 35,000 acres from the Rockefeller family. It is dominated by the Teton Range, which has a dozen peaks more than 12,000 feet high, and the broad valley known as Jackson Hole.

Whenever I've visited Grand Teton, which has been as often as possible, I've tried to guess where "Shane" was filmed, but the valley is broad, and nobody I asked — rangers or locals — really knew.

Last August I decided to find out. It wasn't exactly a pilgrimage. I had other goals, including hanging out with my grown son Alex, who joined me on the trip; trying to photograph the perfect Teton sunrise; and reaching Lake Solitude, about 15 miles into the mountains through Cascade Canyon, a trail that had defeated me in the past.

There was lots of unfinished business. It was time to make good on some Teton daydreams and test myself a bit.

Driving north from Salt Lake City, we arrived in early afternoon. Just outside Jackson, Alex and I were rewarded with a broadside view of the Teton Range, a sight that never fails to take my breath away. It took only half an hour before we saw some of the charismatic fauna of the Greater Yellowstone Basin. As we approached our cabin at Coulter Bay Village on the north shore of Jackson Lake, we caught sight of two black bears and a moose. Good omens.

The next morning, we were up before dawn to check out sunrise at the Snake River Overlook, made famous by Ansel Adams' shot of the river curving toward the mountains.

The Tetons may be spectacular, but that doesn't mean they are easy to photograph. I am no pro and am as ignorant of f-stops as can be, so I'm willing to trust my camera's computer chip to augment my main job: framing the shot. Yet even that industrious chip can have trouble with the lighting in Jackson Hole.

The Tetons rise more than a mile so abruptly from the valley floor that they often appear washed out in landscape photos. If the mountains are captured well in the morning light, the foreground often can appear too dark because the contrast is difficult for the camera to balance.

The first rays of the sun kissed the tops of the peaks, but the river valley was still in darkness. By the time the light reached the riverbank and forest, we had only a few minutes before the full sunrise overwhelmed the mountains. But that was enough, especially in the mid-30s chill. We retreated to the Jackson Lake Lodge for breakfast and to plan our quest for the first "Shane" location: the Starrett Homestead.

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Elusive film site

I had unearthed a CD-ROM book "The Making of Shane," by Walt Farmer, which provided detailed directions and even GPS coordinates to the film's sites. How could we go wrong?

Pretty easily, it turned out. We searched some back roads in the Antelope Flats area parallel to U.S. Highway 26 on the park's east side but never found the trail through the sagebrush that led to where the homestead set had been built in 1952. Rather than bushwhack, we satisfied ourselves with a long view of the area.

Not that we didn't have some success. We found the only "Shane" location still standing, a cluster of small log structures pre-dating the film that were used as the cabin of beleaguered homesteader Ernie Wright. Though abandoned and in disrepair, they were easily recognizable, bringing to mind a couple of dramatic scenes in which Rykers' men kill Ernie's sow, orphaning her piglets, and later stampede cattle through his crops.

The second morning built upon our previous success.

We first decamped to the Oxbow Bend Turnout, near Moran Junction, for another sunrise. The spot is deservedly one of the park's most popular photo destinations, but in the cold predawn dark, we had it to ourselves. We walked to the bank of the Snake River and studied the still waters, which barely reflected Mt. Moran and the clouds through the fog.

Other than a few birdcalls and fish breaking the surface of the river, it was quiet, until in the distance we heard the unmistakable serenade of wolves. The animals were successfully reintroduced to Yellowstone in 1995, and a pack had migrated south to Grand Teton.

Sunrise did not disappoint. The first light touched Mt. Moran, bathing it in a pink glow. The still waters of the river allowed us to capture the clouds and peaks in mirror images, muted by morning mists and constantly changing as the sun drenched the landscape.

After breakfast at the Jackson Lake Lodge, we resolved to find the holy grail of "Shane" sites: Cemetery Hill and the nearby town, where much of the film's action took place.

We followed the CD-ROM's directions down washboard roads and found the little trail head. We had only to follow the faint trail half a mile or so west through the scrubland to the hill.

As we climbed the small hill, I caught sight of movement toward the west. I stood mesmerized, thinking for a crazy moment it was a tiny horse galloping through the sage. At about 30 yards I focused on a massive gray wolf, mostly light-colored with streaks of black, holding its tail high and loping past us as it disappeared around a hill, too quickly for us to react with our cameras.

We were speechless. For a moment it seemed that we were in the wilderness that "Shane" had portrayed so well.

Of course, when I think of the "Shane" sites, I imagine them as they were in the film, but Hollywood usually trumps reality. The cemetery and town seemed real enough in the film, but they were merely sets built and dismantled in the middle of nowhere.

There are still a few pieces of lumber strewn about the hilltop and a small depression where the homesteaders dug the grave of Frank "Stonewall" Torrey, the blustering ex-Confederate homesteader played by Elisha Cook Jr. who was killed in one of the most famous western fight scenes ever. But I had to use my imagination to conjure up anything more.

The town site is half a mile farther toward Grand Teton peak. We couldn't find this trail, but it was obvious where it had been from the Grand Teton backdrop. Satisfied to be this close, we imagined cowboys celebrating the Fourth of July in front of Grafton's Saloon and Palance's Wilson gunning down Cook's Torrey. It seemed so real, so alive on the screen, but now there was nothing, save our imagination, which is, after all, the most a movie can give you anyhow.

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Long hike to Solitude

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