No. 181 - Deer Valley: A Field Guide of Sorts
My first visit to Deer Valley was a quick one – I was driving from Seattle to Atlanta, along the spine of the Rocky Mountains, with stops in Bozeman, Sun Valley, Jackson Hole, Park City, and Aspen.
I woke up that morning in a tent in Sun Valley, swung by my old stomping grounds in Jackson Hole, and arrived in Park City, where I took the St. Regis funicular high atop the mountains of Deer Valley. I put my feet up fireside while the sky swirled with brush strokes of magenta, lemon, and peach.
I finished my coffee, checked into a hostel, and took the first shower I had in days before crashing. I’d camped in Montana and Idaho the nights before and was dying for four walls and heat.
My time in Deer Valley was short lived, but it left an impression (I suppose all St. Regis’s have the effect). The views were marvelous and the people watching was first class – I knew I’d be back, I just didn’t know when.
Fast forward a few years to the Summer of 2025.
I landed in Deer Valley via Austin to meet a buddy for a few days of live music, ski lift rides, and writing postcards in Library Field.
Just like Deer Valley, there are places in America that are … dare I say … perfect. Carmel, Newport, Tribeca, Coastal Connecticut, Aspen, Coachella Valley, St. Simons Island, and Back Bay in Boston (to name a few).
They’re charming, subtly exclusive (but not all the time), and outrageously expensive. At times you feel like you’re walking through a novel, or, as I’ve written in the past, a background character in a Nancy Meyers film.
No detail, however lackadaisical it appears, be it a frayed Brooks Brothers collar beneath a V-neck, or a slightly askew Ivy League sticker on the back of a 300TD, is ever accidental.
Everyone seems unusually tan, no matter the time of year, and the measure of a person’s worth is tied to how many seasonal nouns they can turn into verbs:
For instance, it could come outright, as in, “We summer in Maine, darling.”
Or, when the bourgeoisie is being coy, the verb slips in casually: “Can you believe it, my Bronco at our winter place in Beaver Creek broke down again.”
When kids are present, they look like mini Ralph Lauren models: blonde, rosy cheeks, and like their parents, they have tans too – like they were dipped in honey at Bergdorf’s before the nanny dressed them.
I may come across as being a critic, perhaps a bit acerbic, but I’d only be the butt of my own joke. I love these places – like a politico does graft. And worse, I look the part – though I’d like to believe I’m not as calculating as, say, a guy wearing Murray’s in the Sankaty locker room.
I’d go for a nonchalant approach, perhaps frayed khakis with Tod’s, sans socks, tan ankles. Do you see how absurd this is? Point is – there’s a look to these towns and everyone plays by a set of unwritten rules, penned by WASPs at the turn of the nineteenth century, refined by Emily Post in 1922, and reinforced by the resurgence of The Official Preppy Handbook.
Anyway, when I got to Deer Valley, my buddy and I hopped on a ski lift – which is one of my favorite summertime activities. I’d place it ahead of everything outside of a good G&T. First of all, you get to sit on your ass and do nothing but enjoy views few get to see – and not just of the mountains, but of the folks passing by in the opposite direction.
I said to my buddy as chairlift after chairlift of beautiful people waved to us, “There are only two types in these towns: those who made the right decisions in life, and those who were born into it – no one accidentally shows up in Deer Valley.” He thought about it for a second and reluctantly agreed after figuring out which bucket he fell into.
Think about it – how many people can spend a weekday in July sitting on a ski lift in a remote town where hotel rooms cost as much as some families mortgages?
For starters, most people are working; be it bussing tables, rotting in cubicles, or doing any number of jobs that come with a boss, a schedule, and the ever present and impossible to satisfy “Shareholders.”
One of the main reasons I had to get out of corporate was the whole shareholders bullshit. Like I give a flying f*ck about faceless shareholders – especially in light of the fact that a tiny percentage of the employees owned any stock – me included. Further, once I realized that the all-important shareholders were banks, private equity shops, and hedge funds, I really quit giving a shit about making billionaires into trillionaires.
It blows my mind that there are clowns in middle management who think the worker bees are motivated to serve a shareholder. And to remind them of that daily does nothing but reinforce the belief that your average limp dick “leader” is nothing more than an egomaniac dunce with an inferiority complex.
Anyway, now that I got that off my chest, let’s get back to who’s enjoying the views at three o’clock in the afternoon in Deer Valley. Curiously enough, I am one of them, but that doesn’t mean I forgot what it was like to fight traffic, circle parking decks looking for a space, and walk into a skyscraper with the rank and file who, without the help of caffeine and amphetamines, would be indistinguishable from a bunch of zombies in blazers and skirts, marching in unison to spend the day with people they don’t like, working for a company they don’t respect, to enrich shareholders they don’t know.
All that is to say, when I’m enjoying a ride on a chairlift, or teeing off at 10 a.m. on a weekday, I know how good I have it. But it didn’t come without a price. Someday I’ll write a book about it because every “overnight” success quickly gets a case of amnesia. And if you’ve been blessed enough to experience entrepreneurial success, you know why – NO ONE wants to relive what it took to get there: brutal is putting it lightly.
To be clear – I am NOT talking about the silver spoon crowd. This does not apply to the guys who grew up “summering” in the aforementioned towns. I’m talking about the guys who earn their way into those towns.
I’m at an age where I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut when I hear trust fund babies talking about their trials and tribulations. Sorry pal – being born on third base is not the same as hitting a triple. If you never mowed your lawn growing up because daddy hired someone to do it – it’s best to fade into a wallflower when you’re around men who’ll outwork you in their sleep.
Wasn’t this piece about Deer Valley? Why am I shitting on the likes of Parker, Langdon, and Bennett? I’m sure they’re hard workers in their own right. After all, Lehman Brothers needed interns, and every ski lift needs a seasonal operator. Those are jobs … right? Even if the trustafarian¹ scanning your badge on Ajax² is wearing a Canada Goose³ that his mother bought on Wooster Street⁴.
Imagine if your offspring pieced this resume together before being bankrolled into an overnight success that no one could possibly believe to be true; not his siblings, childhood friends, fraternity brothers, or his string of Park Avenue therapists.
Professional Experience
J.P. Morgan & Co., New York, NY
Summer Analyst, Investment Banking Division (2019)
Regularly combed my hair (and wore a tie)
Received glowing reviews, unrelated to the fact that Uncle Ron is a Managing Director
Maroon Creek Club, Aspen, CO
Seasonal Tennis Instructor (Summers 2017–2018)
Demonstrated resilience when asked to pick up tennis balls personally
Performed gallantly (most of the time) even when dry heaving in the janitor’s closest after a big night at the Caribou Club
Education
Princeton University — B.A. in History
GPA: 1.7
Cottage Club, Social Chair
Junior Varsity Swim Team, Freshman Year
New Mexico Military Institute, Roswell, NM
Withdrew under mutual agreement
Horace Mann School, Bronx, NY
Attended; did not graduate
High School Equivalency Diploma (GED)
Completed 2021
Good kid, I’m sure, but not a real entrepreneur – though, from all appearances, especially when he’s snorting Peruvian flake between magnums of Dom Pérignon at the Aspen Snow Polo Championship, he looks the definition of success.
I digress. Back to Deer Valley.
It’s impossible not to realize you’re in the lap of luxury when you’re eating a twenty-four-dollar bowl of chili in the middle of a mountain range while a band covers Steely Dan. There’s a decadence to it – or, maybe more appropriately, there’s an element of guilty pleasure. But the guilt is short lived – IF you feel you earned it … at least that’s how I see it.
Personally, I put in the work. I took the risks and got my ass handed to me MANY times. Hell, I’ve eaten more humble pie than Lardass did blueberry pie in Stand By Me. It wasn’t easy and it sure as hell wasn’t fun, but by the grace of God it happened.
And that’s why I was goofing around in Deer Valley on a weekday – and loving EVERY MINUTE OF IT.
¹ Trustafarian (n.) — A rich kid, usually educated in a private school, whose full-time job is "finding himself" in mountain towns in the winter and Phish tours in the summer.
² Ajax (n.) — Local nickname for Aspen Mountain, the ski hill that rises straight out of downtown Aspen like Jamie Dimon’s $3 billion erection on Park Avenue (see below).
³ Canada Goose (n.) — An outerwear company that makes $1,900 parkas stuffed with goose down and status.
⁴ Wooster Street (n.) — A cobblestone street in SoHo. Mentioning that your jacket came from Wooster St. is shorthand for: “It wasn’t on sale, and yes, I overpaid.”
*Composed, Edited, and Published in Atlanta, GA
