Notes from the Lodge

As a non-skier in a family of skiers, I have cultivated an affection for hanging out in lodges. This affection is adjacent to my fondness for hotel lobbies.

When my sons and husband planned a ski trip, I came down with a severe case of FOMO and decided to tag along. I planned to read, write, and hang out in lodges. This trip was to Sun Valley, Idaho, a place that none of us had been to before.

I joined the trip already in progress. My uber driver from the small airport in Hailey Idaho was Buddy. He invited me to sit in the front seat of his jeep. Buddy introduced himself as a retired cowboy. He was probably in his 70s. He told me he doesn’t drive for uber often, but when he does, he enjoys it a lot. Mostly he is caring for his small herds of cattle and horses. He guides tourists on horseback rides in the summers. He skis. He also apparently likes to eat out. He gave me a rundown of all of the high end restaurants in town, or at least most of them. All of them except the few that we decided to go to. I guess our tastes are a little different. When I asked him if there was a good bookstore in the area (I would visit an absolutely delightful one on the trip), he said. “Oooo, you’ve got the wrong person. I’m a Louis L’amour kind of guy.” Yes, that checks out. Noted, Buddy. He tipped his hat to me when he dropped me off at my destination. I felt properly welcomed to Idaho.

I was especially excited for the next day, where I would spend the day in the lodge where Ernest Hemingway wrote the second half of his book “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” To be honest, I am not the world’s biggest Hemingway fan, but I was certain the lodge would hold some writerly magic.

I joined my family in the big black suburban my son had rented, on their way to the base of the mountain. As we pulled up to the Sun Valley Lodge, he said, “Mom, I feel like we are dropping you off at daycare while we go to ski.” I laughed as the valet opened the car door for me and held the door open to the lodge. This is my kind of daycare. It’s also a lobby, with a restaurant and bar, and spa water! It was spacious, lovely, lodgy, and completely empty. I had my pick of where to sit for the day. I rejected the deep soft couch by the fireplace in favor of a small glass table near a sunny window, with a view of the ice skating rink. I plugged in my laptop and then got into the mood of the place by taking a tour of the vintage black and white photographs of Sun Valley’s celebrities visitors. Oh hello, Hemingway. There you are.

A group of young women gathered near me. Two women were knitting and one was doing some felting. Another was embroidering. They looked more Hollywood-adjacent than you might expect a group of crafters meeting on a weekday in a lodge to look. Given the marble floors and massive windows, I could hear their conversations quite clearly.

Overheard at Sun Valley Lodge:

“It’s hard to find a babysitter because we don’t do screens.”

“My daughter is very alpha. Which is awesome. But so hard to parent. I’m constantly saying no.”

“I want to get my hands dirty. There is so much generational ranching here. Maybe a foundation.”

“We went to Vegas for one day to have brunch and sit by the pool.”

The woman with a British accent gathered her things and left. As the group said goodbye and watched her leave, I heard:

“She was working a trade desk in London and one day woke up and said I don’t want to do this, and moved here.”

Meanwhile, there is a woman dusting already gleaming surfaces, wiping down tables that have not been occupied, misting orchids and plants, plumping pillows, and vacuuming carpets that had not yet been walked on that day.

Two women in their 70s sat near me. Overheard from them:

“My daughter had a pilates studio right near where David Bowie used to live in Greenwich Village, until Covid shut it down.”

“We wanted to go somewhere hot for Thanksgiving, so we went to Morocco.”

At this point, I put in my AirPods and got some work done. I wrote a scene for my book that takes place in a hotel lobby, that I had been struggling with. I had a productive couple of hours, and an overpriced mediocre chicken salad sandwich. In the mid afternoon, the place started to pick up a bit.

An older woman came in. She was flushed, hair mussed up, ski jacket unzipped, and shuffling a bit like she was still on cross country skis. She came over to ask where I was from, and I got ready for a friendly conversation. Karen introduced herself and told me she’s 84 years old and lives in Ketchum, Idaho. She went to grad school at Stanford, then taught at a university, freshmen English, in Idaho. She got bored with that and wanted to join the peace corp but had an 8 month wait. Couldn’t sign a teaching contract for the next year, so she went to Mississippi and worked in civil rights, fighting for black people to have the right to vote. She met Martin Luther King. “I liked him very much. Very smart. Perfect English. Verrry handsome. But too fucking short to go to bed with.” She waits for my reaction. It’s not the first time she has delivered this line. I gave her what she wanted; raised eyebrows, a huge smile, and a laugh. I didn’t want her to stop talking.

Like Buddy, Karen also wanted to recommend places. Her recommendations centered around where to go for a good happy hour in the area. She pointed to her blue aluminum thermos sitting on her table. “See that blue thermos? It’s white wine. I bring my own, it’s too expensive here.”

The next day, in a different lodge, I chose a table by the fireplace. AirPods on, I was typing away when an older woman asked if she could share my table. I looked up and saw there were many tables open. She plopped down and said, “Don’t worry, I have things to read, I won’t talk to you the whole time.”

Well Debbie, age 77, had a lot to tell me. She grew up in Kentucky. Skied until recently. She’s on her third marriage. Her first one ended because her husband didn’t work and she was supporting him and two kids on a teacher’s salary and he was more like a kid than a husband. In her second marriage she spent time living on a boat that they sailed to Portugal, and they liked it there so they stayed there living on the boat for a while. That husband had a mean and nasty daughter who didn’t like her. Her current husband is her same age, and he runs a horse-betting business based in the Philippines, and is looking to expand into betting on cars. It is around this time in our conversation, when she is rearranging her zip lock bags with books and papers in them, that I notice her diamond ring. It may have been bigger than Taylor Swift’s. It might have been the biggest diamond I’ve ever seen.

I had a date at the Roundhouse, a restaurant mid-mountain, with my family. Saying goodbye to Debbie, I rode the gondola up for a delightful lunch with Aperol spritz and a spectacular view framed by huge icicles in the windows. I then took the chair lift to the top of the mountain, where I sat in the sun and took in the view. There’s another surprisingly large restaurant up there, that mostly serves beer.

Overheard at the top of the mountain:

“Dude you should hear me piss, it’s like a power washer. Strong pelvic floor. We should go to Costco and get some ribeyes.”

I enjoyed my ski trip immensely, including Aprés at a place called Grumpy’s and a few visits to the hot tub. The best part was being with my family, all together in the evenings when we ate in, telling stories about our day. I’ll go to daycare in the lodge any time.