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It’s August hot.
The key to keeping cool in Sun Valley in the summer month with more events than anyone can consume, even on vacation, is to put life’s frenzy on ice. Understanding a few things about the area will make this busy month enjoyable for everyone.
Being on Mountain Daylight Time is more than just a time shift for visitors. Mountain Time requires an entirely different attitude than cities in any time zone.
It is possible and necessary to adopt a mountain attitude the minute the door opens on the plane that lands in Hailey or when the car crosses the Blaine County line near Carey or Timmerman Hill.
The first step is to breath the air of 6,000 delicious feet of altitude. There’s less oxygen here, so it’s important for seasiders to give their bodies a couple of days to adapt. It’s a great excuse to be lazier than usual and not a bad place from which to start some serious R&R.
The next step is to remember that these mountains have been here for thousands of years and will be here after everyone here this month has expired.
The mountains will not suddenly disappear nor be ripped from our sight. They require no ticket for admission, no pre-approval of financial statements. To enjoy them, people must simply take notice.
Mountains and the sun are good pacesetters and should inspire people to reset their timepieces to “slow.” With nearly everything people need within a 10-minute walk in valley towns, haste is pointless.
It’s easy to spot people who haven’t yet adopted and adapted to Mountain Time.
When walking, they have a phone to their ear. When driving, they have a phone to their ear—illegal here.
They speed, cut dangerously in front of other drivers, ignore pedestrians, tailgate and create non-existent lanes.
They wonder why local drivers obey speed limits. Here’s why. Local drivers know that at any moment an elk, moose or a deer may become roadkill on their grill and consume vast amounts of time and money for repairs. They know that the car that passed them at light speed will be waiting at the next stoplight when they arrive.
If not on Mountain Time, cyclists can’t decide if they are on a bike or on foot. They dash and dart in precipitous swoops that could render them hood ornaments. Playing chicken with tons of moving steel is their M.O., and they don’t seem to mind that their destination could be the cemetery.
The less physically ambitious who elect to dismiss the mountain ethos can be seen jockeying for position at concerts, yakking through the adagios and pianissimos.
The key to enjoying the mountains is simple. Stop and move with their rhythms. Soak up cool nights and the sight of the Milky Way. It’s hard to hold on to an exaggerated sense of entitlement or worry after contemplating layers of twinkling galaxies.
The world’s problems will not go away but merging with Mountain Time and chilling out will keep them at bay long enough to restore the ability to see life’s small joys and take pleasure in them.
“Our View” represents the opinion of the newspaper editorial board, which is made up of members of its board of directors. Remarks may be directed to editorialboard@mtexpress.com.
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(7) comments
Beautiful "Our View." We locals need these reminders too from time to time. I enjoyed the attention to detail of all the little and big things that define our sense of place. Thank you, IME, for the "breath" of fresh aire.
As far a you other Luddites on this post, maybe take some advice from this column and go for a hike.
I wouldn’t have necessarily used the term “Luddite” to convey the point you make with your comment, 2 Sense, but I take your point. It was uncharacteristically civil of you to word it that way in your comment. I thank you for that and so does poor Perry as the one who started this melodramatic and precious little exchange, probably.
You are also more diplomatic with your comment than was I with mine, given the way you worded your reference to the editorial board’s gaffe with the word “breath”. I pointed out that this all too common mistake is a ‘pet peeve’ of mine, which itself is a little neurotic, as I also pointed out. A spelling mistake like this is slightly more egregious when made by the editorial staff of a newspaper, however, and so it warranted a friendly comment in my opinion, even though I was admittedly being a little pedantic by making it.
You're very good to point out the benefits of going for a walk, 2 Sense. Climbing single-track on a bike serves me better as a palliative for a compulsion that generates trivial rants like this, so thanks for the friendly advice, and also for the gentle admonishment to chill out over a totally inconsequential error made in our local newspaper. You're quite right.
The point you are making is just a small example of the greater failing of the community by the IME. The lack of attention to detail is exhibited in most of the articles, which generally parrot rather than report. Very seldom are multiple perspectives included. This paper pushes one narrative and discourages governors of opinion. It’s a bit of an embarrassment. For comparison, check out the JH or Aspen papers.
Back off, Perry. While I consider this editorial to be one of the more superficial examples of what the editorial board publishes in its paper, I find your comment to be petulant, vaguely sophomoric and intellectually supercilious, not to mention a little cringe-worthy, as are many of your comments, by the way.
I get a little tired of your superiority complex, sport. Sure, the IME is a small-town newspaper, it's not the London or New York Times, but then it doesn't need to be, And, in terms of accuracy, and the paper's staff does a very good job on balance, in my opinion, very good indeed.
Concerning the Jackson Hole paper, in my view it's a mouthpiece for the beer swilling local Wyoming yokels (to use a hackneyed phrase I've never used before), and as for the Aspen paper, I look at it pretty often, contrary to your lame, implied assumption that I don't; it may be more ambitious in terms of issues per week and depth of its staff, but the IME holds its own pretty darn well in comparison, thank you very much.
The IME is not beyond criticism and the occasional reproach but no newspaper is. We don't need you to remind us of that fact.
*And, in terms of accuracy, the paper's staff does a very good job, on balance in my opinion, very good indeed. Editorials occasionally go off-track from the point of view this reader's perceived values but that's inherent to the nature of the newspaper business, imo, and as you will no doubt know by now, Perry, given your vast experience. [NB. This is a correction & addition to the 2nd paragraph of the comment below.]
* [NB. This is a correction & addition to the 2nd paragraph of the comment ABOVE]
Look, I realize what I'm about to say is a little pedantic, not to mention trivial, in this day and age of problems so immense in scale and severe in depth that they almost defy the imagination. However, the newspaper's editorial board just published an opinion piece with the following sentence, viz. "The first step is to breath the air of 6,000 delicious feet of altitude.".
The fact that the word "breath" was used instead of "breathe" and that the mistake made it through this paper's in-house editorial gauntlet needs to be pointed out for public consumption, in my opinion.
I know it's an easy mistake to make and that this is clearly a First World problem. Hell, I've made that gaffe in spelling myself, rarely, mind you, but it has happened to me as well. But the IME's editorial board, in its own newspaper?
C'mon people, you deserve a some friendly ribbing for not catching that mistake, and on a more serious note, it casts a hint of doubt on your competence which, by extension, also casts potential aspersion on the validity your views beyond this one little editorial which itself is a little gratuitous, to be fair.
Details matter, right? So, be more careful, please. You can do better than that, and to be fair, you have and do, most of the time. Just tighten up your game a tad.
Journalism and reporting is under enough pressure with diffident idiots like Kellyanne Conway, bless her little black heart, inventing phrases like "alternative facts", and Trump, who's an imbecilic cliché of a human being himself, spewing asinine pejoratives like "fake news" and "witch hunt" in almost every incoherent utterance he makes.
I'd respectfully suggest you try to avoid making your professional life needlessly harder for yourselves with embarrassing mistakes like using "breath" instead of "breathe". I admit I'm being slightly neurotic here but it's a 'pet peeve' (god I hate using that term) of mine. Thanks very much.
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