KETCHUM, Idaho — The paragliders lifted silently off Bald Mountain, great birds of red and yellow in a blue sky, sailing over skiers on slopes lighted almost unimaginably bright white by the afternoon sun. Near a ski lodge, a man pedaled a green bicycle, his young son on the handlebars. Two brown dogs wrestled in the snow.
It was all so much colorful nirvana, except for the spooky black Suburbans and the guys with the guns.
"All the Secret Service -- it's weird. It makes me kind of nervous," saleswoman Rachel Wolfe said quietly as presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry made his way out of Paul Kenny's Ski and Sports over the weekend, a snowboard slung over his shoulder.
"The local celebrities, like Demi Moore, Bruce Willis -- everybody knows them. It's no big deal," the 23-year-old added. "This is different. And it's going to get worse."
The Massachusetts senator was making the first visit to his mountain home since the Secret Service began providing him protection last month. And as often happens every four years to a small community somewhere -- such as Crawford, Texas, when George W. Bush emerged in 2000 as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee -- this area in south-central Idaho is getting its first feel of how life would change if Kerry wins the White House.
"One of his security guys yelled at me" for getting in Kerry's way on the ski slopes, 14-year-old Matt Trabert grumbled Saturday. Trabert turned to friend Brad Alvarez and said: "Wouldn't that be funny if he fell?"
"Yeah, wouldn't that be funny if he did a total face plant!" Alvarez said.
Nestled into the Sawtooth Mountains, Ketchum -- the main town in the area best known as Sun Valley -- is home to 3,003 people. The place offers skiing, fly-fishing, backpacking and solitude. The nearest city of significant size is 90 miles west, and Boise isn't so large.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger visited the area recently. Actors Clint Eastwood and Jamie Lee Curtis are fixtures, as were Clark Gable and Errol Flynn in the past. Writer Ernest Hemingway spent his last years here, and the home where he committed suicide in 1961 and his gravesite lure literary-minded tourists.
Established in 1936 by railroad scion Averill Harriman, Sun Valley was the first U.S. ski area developed as a vacation destination rather than just a place to schuss. It also featured the world's first chairlift. But unlike ski towns such as Aspen, Colo., the community has long shunned the spotlight. Its famous inhabitants and visitors have been expected to check their egos, and entourages, upon their arrival.
