Don't Save Anything: The Uncollected Writings of James Salter(75)

The clientele tends to be young and dazzling, with a few nostalgic men of forty thrown in. It seems as if the casts of several hit movies as well as characters from the pages of Vogue and Interview have been spilled over the tables and chairs of the two rooms. As with all such places, one section is more desirable; at the Jerome it’s the front, where the bar is located. Normally, you can’t get a seat there after five in the afternoon.

The bar’s success is due in part to its reputation as a hangout for Aspen’s most notorious figure, gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson. Thompson lives in a secluded valley about ten miles from town and usually shows up late in the day or in the evening, sometimes during the last quarter of a football game. He was once a sports columnist, and his interest in such matters has not diminished. He usually stations himself near the coffee maker and television at the end of the bar; when irritated by the game or by life in general, he will throw food or drink at the screen. Thompson does leave his mark, but as Solheim comments philosophically, “A high-pressure hose gets rid of most of it.”

There are only two seasons in Aspen—winter and summer. The winter is bigger; more money is spent then. Skiing begins in early December, depending on the amount of snow and the number of tourists expected. It is great skiing, as good as any in the world. Aspen doesn’t get huge amounts of snow, but it always seems to get enough—and the snow is wonderful, often so squeaky and cold that skiing on it is like gliding on velvet. There are at least 300 miles of trails on four principal mountains: Ajax (as the locals call Aspen Mountain), Highlands, Buttermilk, and Snowmass. There are some difficult runs, but most of the skiing is exciting, not frightening. The views alone, the vast panoramas of blue peaks in brilliant sunlight, are worth the price of a too-expensive room or condominium and the long waits in restaurants and supermarkets.

The winter ends in Aspen on the day the lifts close. There is often still plenty of snow and—because spring storms are frequent—sometimes some of the coldest, purest skiing of the season. But around Easter Sunday, on a date that the lift owners have decided on long in advance, everything stops. The curtain descends. It is as if the town breathes a sigh and collapses. For weeks afterward, it is like a beautiful house the morning after an unforgettable party.

There is a vast exodus of all those who have worked feverishly since November—ski instructors, restaurant help, maids. They trade one paradise for another, heading for Hawaii or the beaches of Mexico.

One of the last of the ski bums, his thirties drawing to a close, sits in the sauna after the final day. On his face is the imprint of nothing but pleasurable years. His knees are gone, he says. They can only take so much, so many bumps, no matter how strong they are. When they’re gone, the veterans agree, that’s it. He’s heading for California, the fading champion says. He’s going to Esalen. He wants to find his true center before it’s too late.

For a few months in spring, Aspen is virtually closed. In the old days, in the ’60s, it was a time of never-ending mud, as the spring thaw turned the unpaved streets into quagmires. Now, it is merely a mournful time of watching the snow vanish week by week from runs whose very names recently had the icy feel of terror: Corkscrew, Lower Stein, Franklin Dump. They are slowly becoming naked and harmless, covered in the end, like battlefields, with green.

The other season, summer, begins in June with the International Design Conference. The restaurants reopen; there is a feeling of awakening. Although nights can still be very cold at this time of year, the real crowds have not yet arrived, and there is a certain sense of privilege—something of the feeling that existed in the ’50s and ’60s, the feeling that made people fall in love with the town. The huge cottonwoods are smudged with green. Independence Pass, over which the original settlers came, is white with snow in the distance. The pass is 12,000 feet high; there are snowfields almost year-round, and the air is so thin it seems metallic. A narrow, breathtaking road crosses the pass and is usually open from June through October, depending on the weather.

The real activity of the summer, beginning in late June, is music. Since 1949, the Aspen Music Festival has featured some of the world’s greatest artists—Penderecki, Britten, Perlman, Zuckerman, Milhaud. The concerts take place in a large tent in a meadow surrounded by beautiful views and million-dollar houses. There is a music school with 900 students, master classes, operas, and string quartets. Students perform at outside restaurants and on the mall, and for two months Aspen comes close to the dream that was Paepcke’s.

In addition to the music there is ballet—Ballet West comes from its Salt Lake City home every year—the Physics Center (a serious convocation of physicists that goes on throughout the summer), and various activities of the Aspen Institute. The Institute was created by Paepcke as the intellectual arm of his spa, aimed at exposing successful men to great ideas. Executives who have read little of importance since college days undertake two weeks of Aristotle, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and the like, discussing what they read in seminars. After Paepcke’s death the Institute drifted, if not exactly to the right at least into the arms of the establishment, where it is now virtually indistinguishable from other foundations closely connected with government and business. Its present offices are in New York, and Aspen is only its bohemian grove—one of the places where the many problems facing us in these chaotic times are discussed and predictable reports are written up afterward.