Sun Valley, Idaho

Many years ago, at a period when I was cultivating my first moustache, I was persuaded to read a book that has stayed with me ever since. That is to say, the feeling of reading the book lingered long after I was done with it, but not a word did my memory retain, until I picked it up again last week.

Here is a passage:

Now for the Art of catching fish, that is to say, how to make a man that was none to be an Angler by a book; he that undertakes it, shall undertake a harder task than Mr. Hales, a most valiant and excellent fencer, who, in a printed book called A Private School of Defence, undertook to teach that art or science, and was laughed at for his labour. Not but many useful things might be learnt by that book, but he was laughed at because that art was not to be taught by words, but by practice; and so must Angling.

Some of you may recognize the style. The Compleat Angler is by Izaak Walton and it was published in 1653. Everyone should read it, and not just anglers, because the book is so much fun.

It came to mind because we were staying in Hailey, Idaho, which is close to world famous trout streams. Hailey is a ten-minute drive from the town of Ketchum, itself only a longish walk to Sun Valley resort. So close are all these burghs, that they’re generally lumped together as Sun Valley. So, yes, we were in Sun Valley.

But to the fishing. I did not get to fish, but we spent a magical late afternoon at Silver Creek, a place of shallow swift streams, hungry trout and darting mayflies. Ernest Hemingway came here often, as do wealthy anglers from all over the world, for the pleasures of catching and releasing the famous trout.

On another day, we visited the town of Ketchum, whose ersatz village charm rivals the fakery of Mont-Tremblant. Throw a rock in any direction and you’ll break the window of a Gucci store. I’m sure that when Hemingway lived here, it was much less groomed. It probably retained more than a whiff of its mining origins, when mules hauled heavy ore wagons from the mines, to be offloaded onto train cars for refining in Salt Lake City, some three hundred miles away.

It was here, at his home in Ketchum, that Ernest Hemingway blew his brains out with a shotgun. A genetic disease ran in his family and made many of them crazy. Heavy drinking didn’t help, nor did the writer’s nagging paranoia. Hemingway’s father killed himself, as did his brother and sister. Also, more recently, did Margaux Hemingway. Seven suicides in all.

Achilles and the Count

While in Hailey, I took several runs along Wood River Trail, just seven hundred metres from the place we were renting. Built on an old rail line, the paved trail is twenty miles long and runs from the town of Bellevue to just past Ketchum. The railroad engineer must have determined the route by placing a ruler on a map of Sun Valley and running his pencil along the steel edge. It’s that straight.

As you run, the effects of high altitude, the arid desert climate and blistering mid-day heat accumulate. You note the many grasshoppers on the path. You’ve been warned about rattlers. But also about dehydration: the things it can do…

And so you begin talking to the Achilles tendon on your right heel, which you’ve been mollycoddling long enough — for months, in fact! You’ve caused me no end of frustration, you calmly explain, trying to not betray the bitterness in your heart. It’s always three steps forward, two steps back with you, isn’t it? I took you to run in Rockport, Massachusetts and then to Anacortes, Washington — clear across the continent. Now we’re in sun splashed, world-famous Sun Valley and still you persist in…

You see a small park, a father and two small children, a water fountain. You stop, take a drink and throw some water on your face. Nearby is a large plaque that tells the origin story of Sun Valley.

Early in the twentieth century, the grotesquely rich chairman of Union Pacific Railroad, Averell Harriman, was disturbed that so many American millionaires were spending their money in the Alps — money that could be his! And so he deputized Count Felix Schaffgotsch, an Austrian-Bohemian nobleman who knew a thing or two about skiing, to find the ideal spot for America’s first destination ski resort. The count had his instructions: The resort had to be well away from any large city, to ensure that the developer, who conveniently and not incidentally also owned railways — the only dependable way of getting into high country in winter — would be doubly rewarded.

The count visited dozens of places across the United States. None of them seemed exactly right, and so he gave up. But then, just as he was packing for home, a telegram summoned him to Idaho.

Fine, one last look.

The count toured up and down the area until he arrived where the resort now stands. He pronounced Sun Valley perfect. Soon after opening in December, 1936, Sun Valley became famous for its tycoons and Hollywood stars — Marilyn, Humphrey, Lucille, they all came.

You won’t find any ski hills named after the count. Inside the resort, you’ll search in vain for the oak-panelled Schaffgotsch Alcove, or even a Schaffgotsch baba au rhum on the dessert menu. Not a trace of the count survives by way of commemoration. Nor does the plaque mention why.

But later on, you discover the reason. The count — urbane, dashing, a champion talker — was also a fervent Nazi. He served in the Waffen SS with great distinction, and was killed in action in Belarus, in 1942.

As I pick up my pace, my heart lifts, emptied of bitterness. Fresh blacktop as far as the eye can see. The path littered with grey-green grasshoppers. Many of them lie dead, crushed by bikes. The live ones pivot as they sense my approach, prepare their jump.