Often we’d go to Sun Valley for Christmas or right after, my father’s shooting schedule permitting. Sun Valley was more colorful and unusual. There were hayrides with horses in big sleighs with bales of hay and lots of blankets. Everyone would travel by horse and sleigh to meet up at Trail Creek Cabin, about a mile up the valley from the lodge. That’s where all the big, fun parties were held. Christmas Eve would begin with a sleigh ride out to Trail Creek Cabin for dinner. Afterward, we’d go to midnight mass in the opera house, where they also ran the movies. On those clear winter nights, the sky was so close down upon you—the beauty of nature (“Did you see the Christmas star?”)—and having a mother and father on either side of you kept you warm. Outside, after mass, with no ambient lights, you could just grab the stars. 116 QUEST
Sometimes they’d keep me out of school for a few days so I could be with my parents when they were on vacation. They put me in Ketchum grade school for a month while my father went hunting and fishing with Hemingway, my mother and I would go skiing. He also would go off and meet friends like Bud Purdy, who had a big, big ranch. My father would be out there all day or go down to Twin Falls and hang out in the local coffee shop. He had grown up in Montana and so this part of the country was most homelike for him. Christmas was always a day of love—that’s what it was for me, not about how high the gifts were piled under the tree. What obviously was a very special life was normal for me, as it was all I knew. We loved doing simple things together as a family and with friends. The “Hollywood Stars” were just my parents’ pals. It was a day of love and of, somehow, real joy. u