Ketchum, Idaho
Ernest Hemingway would be happy to know there are deer wandering around his gravesite.
The deer might not be so bold if they knew where most animals that crossed Hemingway’s path ended up.
Finca Vigía, Ernest Hemingway’s residence in the hills above Havana, Cuba.
Bear and I visited Finca Vigía when we were in Cuba in 2014. Today we are at the author’s summer home, near Ketchum, Idaho.
Ernst Hemingway was living large at his villa in Cuba in the 1950s, with his third wife Martha Gellhorn, two of his children, and a bevy of…
His home near Ketchum, Idaho was the end of the road for the Nobel Prize-winning author.
Ernest Hemingway suffered from a litany of health issues. He endured life-long back pain from injuries sustained in two airplane crashes while in Africa, and from war wounds and mental strain inflicted while he served in two World Wars.
Hemingway lived his entire life on the edge; he accumulated a plethora of accidental and self-inflicted ailments along the way.
The author self-prescribed alcohol as a remedy for his pain, which only added to his misery.
In 1959, suffering from multiple physical and mental afflictions, Hemingway checked himself into The Mayo Clinic, where he was treated with emerging medicines including electroshock therapy, and experimental drugs. On June 30, 1961, Hemingway was “released in ruins” from The Mayo Clinic. He retreated to his home near Ketchum, Idaho.
Two days later Hemingway was dead, the result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Ernest Hemingway was 61.
According to biographer Jeffrey Meyers, Hemingway “unlocked the basement storeroom where his guns were kept, went upstairs to the front entrance foyer, pushed two shells into the twelve-gauge Boss shotgun … put the end of the barrel into his mouth, pulled the trigger and blew out his brains.”
Today we are paying tribute to one of America’s greatest authors by visiting his gravesite and The Pioneer Saloon, a bar Hemingway frequented while he lived in Ketchum.
This shotgun hanging on the wall at The Pioneer Saloon is not “the shotgun”, but another one owned by Hemingway.
In his short lifetime Ernest Hemingway compiled a lasting legacy. The Nobel Prizewinning author published seven novels, six short story compilations, and two works of non-fiction. His writing, combined with an adventurous lifestyle and bombastic nature, assured Hemingway an enduring place in American literary history.
Hemingway’s aura can be felt in Ketchum, 50+ years after his first death.
“Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name.”
– Ernest Hemingway
If Ernest Hemingway’s theory about death is true, his second death is …
… a long way off.
Leave a Reply