HAILEY
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KETCHUM
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SUN VALLEY
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BELLEVUE
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CAREY
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S TA N L E Y • FA I R F I E L D • S H O S H O N E • P I C A B O
WINE AUCTION WORLD SPORTS WITH BALI PAGE 5 WRITERS’ CONFERENCE PAGE 14 RELAY FOR LIFE PAGE 19
READ ABOUT IT ON PAGE 20
J u l y 2 3 , 2 0 1 4 • V o l . 7 • N o . 3 2 • w w w .T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
THE PURPOSE OF PLACE BY DICK DORWORTH
“To be rooted is perhaps the most important but least understood need of the human soul.” —Simone Weil “Of all the memberships we identify ourselves by (racial, ethnic, sexual, national, class, age, religious, occupational), the one that is most forgotten, and has the greatest potential for healing, is place. We must learn to know, love and join our place even more than we love our own ideas. People who can agree that they share a commitment to the landscape/cityscape—even if they are otherwise locked in struggle with each other—have at least one deep thing to share.” —Gary Snyder
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have an old friend, now in his 80s, who has lived since he was a child on the same piece of land in a beautiful valley of a western state framed by mountains. I once wrote a letter of congratulations to him—“for remaining rooted in place … There are few people in our culture who have this sort of good fortune, and having such deep roots has allowed you to grow in certainty from young agile boy with a smile looking for the next adventure to old bionic-kneed man with a smile looking for the next adventure.” During the years from childhood when his home was nearly 10 miles outside town, to the raising of his children, to playing with his grandchildren, that town has grown and surrounded and made a cityscape of the landscape of his youth. Still, his sense of place has allowed him to keep his priorities in order, his integrity intact and his sense of humor in operating shape. He has retired from a teaching career and has a sufficient but not extravagant lifestyle, and when a real estate developer offered him $14 million for his property, he turned it down. My friend said to me, “What would I do with $14 million? Move to Sun Valley and buy a condo? I like it here. I always have. This is my place.” My friend’s wisdom is both informative and inspiring, as are Weil’s and Snyder’s. A person rooted in place has a different experience and understanding of that place and thereby the larger world than one who is passing through to make the next step on the ladder of upward mobility, looking to crash as gently as possible after falling off that ladder, moving to the next job, following the restlessness of disaffection to the next layover or being pushed off place by rising prices. “Place,” as used here, is not to be confused with property and it need not be a particular dwelling or tiny or humongous parcel of land within either landscape or cityscape. Roberta McKercher’s place was Hailey, Idaho. Mary Jane Conger’s
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t u O g n i g n Ha STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
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he view from the rock cliff above Trail Creek Road is a stunning one. The open canyon below sweeps downhill into green hills overlooking Sun Valley and Ketchum. Baldy looms in the background, its ski runs forming what look like a peace sign. And a long waterfall cascades from the cliffs, gushing into Trail Creek, which splashes over granite rock to the valley floor. But Liza Wilson isn’t interested in the scenery around her. She’s fixated on one thing only—the craggy rock in front of her. “You have to stay focused on what’s in front of you, or you’ll lose it,” she says as she clips a rope into a carabiner placed in a crack so a climber below can stop her should she fall. Wilson scours the rock with her myopic viewpoint looking for a tiny crack in which to insert her fingers and a small ledge on which to place her toe. She’s crammed her foot into a rubber climbing shoe two sizes smaller than the shoes she normally wears to increase her sensitivity. Finally, she finds a sliver of rock jutting out an eighth of an inch. She Dick Dorworth’s pack incudes a cheat pole puts her foot on it and leverages her leg and carabiners. Dick Dorworth crams his fingers into a crack. muscles to boost her 5-foot-2 body another couple feet up the wall. The gold ring on her finger glints in the sun as she crams drive north of Sun Valley, is being led by Dick her fingers into a crack. Dorworth, a former speed-ski record holder. “Ugggh!” Dorworth was introduced to rock climbing as a “Way to go, Liza,” says Dick Dorworth 29-year-old in 1968 when he met Scottish mounas fellow climber Jan Koubek lets out taineer Dougal Haston—the first to climb the enough of the rope through the anchor south face of Annapurna and the southwest face fixed in the wall to allow upward progresof Mount Everest—in Squaw Valley, Calif., where sion. Dorworth was teaching skiing. While cyclists measure the kilometers A few months later he persuaded Doug they put on their road bikes, and hikers Tompkins, who founded The North Face; Yvon the miles they hike to bag a peak, rock Chouinard, who would go on to found Patagonia; climbers measure success in mere feet and filmmaker/author Lito Tejada Flores, that in this vertical world of theirs. But they he had enough climbing experience to accompany summon no less satisfaction when they them up Mount Fitz Roy, an 11,000-foot peak reach their goal. of granite, ice and snow in Patagonia. Fitz Roy “Whew!” said Wilson as she touches her is considered one of the world’s toughest mounhand to the top of the 40-foot wall face. This particular outing, a 15-minute
“Upon reaching the rock face, they spend a few minutes studying it, trying to figure out how to take advantage of a long vertical scar in the rock.”
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