Chuck Miller

Teton and Denali are excited about spending a special day with their Dad. 

He picked them to go to work with him, you see, where they’ll learn about the amazing things he does all day.  Although he’s a grown-up, he still likes to take a couple of his stuffed animals to the office in his laptop bag and sit them on the desk to brighten his day. 

It isn’t that strange. Well, maybe it’s a little strange, but lots of people he works with have stuffies at their desks. Those critters just don’t go home at night.

Teton and Denali’s Dad works in an office building, where he sits in a cubicle and types on a computer. They don’t know much about that, but any day spent together sounds like a good one to them. Plus, they’re looking forward to visiting the mess hall for a yummy treat.

They know so little about office work, and they call a cafeteria a mess hall, because they’re from somewhere very different. They’re Northmen, or rather, Northstuffies.

Teton is from… You may have guessed it: the Teton range in Wyoming. And Denali is from… You might have guessed that one, too: Denali National Park in Alaska. Both places have tall, snowy mountains.

But don’t worry about them. They always wear warm hats—Teton’s is trimmed in blue and Denali’s in yellow—and they were born with full beards that keep them extra warm!

Before moving in with Dad, Teton was a trapper, and Denali was a dog sled musher. In the summertime, they came down to the valley to work as cowboys. They still travel back to their homeland often to do those things. In case you’re wondering, they’re both excellent on horseback despite holding the reins with their paws instead of human hands.

I nearly forgot to mention something else important. After a hard day of trapping, or mushing, or rustling cattle on the open range, they like to saddle up to the local saloon for a swig of their favorite drink, maple syrup. If they ever visit you, it’d be neighborly if you had a jug of that handy, m’kay partner. 

Perhaps we should check in on them to see how they’re adjusting to this new environment.

Oh dear, Denali has turned Dad’s computer monitor into a makeshift sled! And Teton is collecting Dad’s important papers as kindling for the campfire he’s planning to build in the conference room! They’re both busy recruiting the other office stuffies as ranch hands, offering double rations and homemade Twizzler jerky to any who’ll join them.

I guess you can take the stuffie out of the mountain, but you can’t take the mountain out of the stuffie. Or something like that.

“Guys, how do you like work? Dad asks nervously.

“Well, it’s awfully quiet in here,” observes Teton, “like the silence right before a twister touches down.”

“Yeah,” agrees Denali, “at least we’ll be able to hear a bear coming, but the walls of your igloo (his cubicle) sure are flimsy. A cub would crash right through them, never mind a full-grown grizzly. We’d better get to work building a proper fort.”

“Guys… guys… I assure you, we’re perfectly safe here in the middle of civilization. How about we just sip our coffee and update the spreadsheet?”

“Safe?” questions Teton. “Does ‘civilization’ mean being surrounded by people as thick as prairie grass, caged like zoo stuffies under these hideous fluorescent lights? A bear might not get us, but boredom surely will.”

“What about this weak coffee your rookie camp cook made?” chimes in Denali. “It’s just coffee enough to make you want a real cup. Let’s find some chocolate chips and pour hot water over ‘em for some nice, strong Cowboy coffee!”

This is definitely not going the way Dad hoped. 

Lunch is an eye-opening experience for his coworkers, and not just because a grown man is sitting with his stuffies. That’s the least of Dad’s worries. 

While the polite gentry nibble salads with fat-free dressing, Teton and Denali each gobble a double cheeseburger and a large order of “those lil ‘taters that look like hay bales,” as Teton puts it (he means tater tots). The entire office is aghast. 

It’s as if a Viking longship landed on the shores of their neatly landscaped corporate lawn and out poured the bearded barbarian horde. In a way, I suppose that’s what did happen.

When the long workday finally ends, Dad isn’t sure who’s more relieved, Teton and Denali or himself. The second they get home, the boys run for the door to, in Denali’s words, “do something useful, like setting a few fence posts or chopping a cord of firewood, before we run out of daylight.”

As he watches them working through the window, Dad realizes that Teton and Denali don’t have a problem at all. They may not be right for office work, but they’re exactly who they were born to be—a couple of rough-and-tumble mountaineers who thrive when they’re adventuring in the fresh air and wide open spaces. 

“Is anybody cut out for sitting and staring at screens all day, or do we just settle for a steady paycheck and the slow death of our dreams?” he ponders. And then he gets up, goes outside, puts his hands in the dirt, and helps them. When they finish working, they toss a football well into the evening with only the moonlight to see by. 

As bad as they were at muddling through a day filled with tasks that didn’t interest them, he marvels at how well those two sweet stuffies can do anything that grabs their attention. They already have a better answer to the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” than most grown-ups who ask it.

At that moment, Dad realizes he needs to reflect on the valuable lesson Teton and Denali taught him during their day at work.

All illustrations lovingly created by Jacob Below (https://jacobbelow.com/).

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I combined my love of Western culture and stuffed animals to create this story. As I was writing it, I hoped a child might read it and giggle at Teton and Denali’s silly antics while also absorbing at least a bit of their lesson about self-discovery. Perhaps a parent dreading the thought of reading yet another bedtime story might also find some little nugget to consider, either for themselves or as they guide their child’s development. 

As someone who enjoys writing, I’ve seen some folks who might also like to write something become fixated on the thought that it has to be world-changing. Even though they might have some good ideas, they never think of anything of that magnitude, so they don’t write anything at all. What a shame we all didn’t get to enjoy the unique musings only their mind could create!

I hope you don’t waste your one precious life on thoughts like that. If something matters to you—even a simple story about a couple of zany stuffed animals who turn an office upside down—then it matters. Go out and find whatever frontier you’re searching for, explore all its mysteries, and share the beauty you find with others.