Imagine you are constantly embarked upon a search for yourself that never ends. You find a great love, play with it, immerse yourself in it—and then step beyond it into a new phase of your life with your next great love.

Imagine your flight from yourself takes a geographical form. You change your address, but in the end you can never find that one passion that drives your life forward.

I always knew his name. Since he was a fighting revolutionary, we could read his novels even at the time when Russia was behind the Iron Curtain.

His main idea? Love and life are worth fighting for.

For me, he is a male writer who, like all the others, wrote about himself. Specifically, he had four passionate marriages and devoted a strong novel to each. He found cozy places for other love stories in some other of his creative pieces. He had a burning desire to make love and his passion for creativity live in the same neighborhood.

But I like his intense and concise quotes. He was great at expressing the Zeitgeist. He captured his own love story in his portrayal of the atmosphere of the times he witnessed.

I visited his residences in Rondo, Spain; Paris, France; Key West, Florida; and Seville, Spain; and now his final resting place in Ketchum, Idaho.

Coming here I had two questions about Hemingway’s complicated personality: Why did he have to get married every time he fell in love? And why did he have to end his own life at the young age of 61?

But first I had to immerse myself in the atmosphere he experienced.

I made a list of the places he visited regularly. According to the description, the owners kept them exactly the same as in the fifties and sixties: the dark, heavy atmosphere of a Wild West saloon, with a lot of memorabilia on the walls.

I noticed such a difference in the atmosphere of the town with its 1400 locals as compared to Paris with its constant exchange of energy, or to Seville, Spain. But maybe at a certain point in your life you have finally absorbed all the energy you possibly can.

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at the typewriter and bleed.”

And bleeding cannot go on forever.

Besides imagining the atmosphere, I wanted to understand the history of Ketchum: how a tiny mining city in the middle of nowhere became an exclusive playground for the rich and famous.

I found the history of Ketchum’s development quite fascinating.

An important person of the world, Averell Harriman, got the idea of increasing railroad transportation to the West of the U.S. After the Olympic Games in Lake Placid in 1932, there was a huge interest in alpine skiing in America. He himself was an avid skier, and he instructed an Austrian Olympic champion to find a place for a ski resort in the West.

After many months of searching, the champion ended up in Ketchum, Idaho, which received record amounts of snow, had plenty of sun, and was surrounded by geometrically regular triangular mountains. Harriman visited and agreed.

They built a lodge just like in the Swiss Alps, with heated pools, golf courses, and tennis courts. The first chair lift in America was installed there. They came up with the attractive name Sun Valley—winter sports under a summer sun.

Harriman invited that most popular American writer, Hemingway, at the moment when he was beginning his third life-romance with Martha, to stay for free. This invitation was the perfect geographical solution to the turbulences of his marriage number two.

“You can never get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”

Harriman also accommodated other Hollywood celebrities in the same way.

The beautiful movie Serenade of Sun Valley inspired a lot of romantic musical enjoyment for many years as well as promoting skiing and introducing people to other entertainment in Sun Valley.

Even though Harriman got busier with world political matters, especially with regard to the Soviet Union and World War II, he never lost his interest in Sun Valley. His business strategy for the resort made this place very popular among the richest 1% of the population.

If you are Someone in the United States, you must own property there. If you don’t own a house, you must at least visit the place and have your picture taken and displayed in Sun Valley Lodge.

Even now, 80 years later, the town still has the same celebrity charm. Besides skiing in the winter, the town offers a summer retreat for billionaires. You can socialize with Mark Zuckerberg, the King of Jordan, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Oprah, and so forth… In that small town, the locals aren’t surprised to meet celebrities. It is such a common event.

But back to Mr. Ernest Hemingway: after living in Sun Valley Lodge as entertainment bait for a rich audience, he came back there for good. He bought a house and stayed for the last two years of his life with his fourth and last wife, Mary, gazing at the fast, narrow Wood River and the isosceles triangle mountains. He could meet his elite friends for hunting and fishing any time he wanted. He built a small house near the entrance of his property and let his fisherman friend live there.

With just a knock on the door, the writer could invite the fisherman to enjoy the wilderness: a magical combination of glamour and serenity.

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”

Every cold, snowy morning while it still dark, I would take a walk, listening to the unique squeaking noise of the snow under my feet. The frost is different here. Instead of making you cold down to your bones, like on the windy streets of New York, it pleasantly pricks the skin outside and inside your nose, like tiny needles. And the snow here rests on the tree branches not evenly, but in the shape of huge and tiny hats. Add colorful electrical lights for decoration and you get quite a magical effect.

This is my explanation for his marriages. Adding that kind of “chemistry” to life gives a writer a tremendous creative boost. Bringing in witnesses and making it official gives a writer the confidence of a new start, just like writing a story on a clean page. You have locked your North Star onto your finger. The new person supplies different points of view, bright colors. Unfortunately, with time those colors become your own colors, and emotional emptiness stimulates the longing for new adventures.

There is an interesting detail about the specific order in which Hemingway sailed from one love story to another. The new girlfriend would first become friends with his present wife, like the passing of the Olympic torch, in the shape of Hemingway. Or maybe he needed some affirmation from the past to step into the future?

“I can’t say how every time I ever put my arms around you I felt that I was home.”

“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.” That can be a hymn to egoism.

“I didn’t want to kiss you goodbye—that was the trouble—I wanted to kiss you good night—and there’s a lot of difference.”

Especially if for that kiss you have to overcome a lot of obstacles. Suffering and happiness make you bleed on paper.

If there’s empty spaces in your heart,

They’ll make you think it’s wrong,

Like having empty spaces,

Means you never can be strong,

But I’ve learned that all these spaces,

Means there’s room enough to grow,

And the people that once filled them,

Were always meant to be let go,

And all these empty spaces,

Create a strange sort of pull,

That attract so many people,

You wouldn’t meet if they were full,

So if you’re made of empty spaces,

Don’t ever think it’s wrong,

Because maybe they’re just empty,

Until the right person comes along.

—Ernest Hemingway

“You’ll ache. And you’re going to love it. It will crush you. And you’re still going to love all of it. Doesn’t it sound lovely beyond belief?”

And you’ll always love me won’t you?

Yes

And the rain won’t make any difference?

No

Just like this piece of art I found on a street of Ketchum, a writer’s soul is constructed of little memories, different emotional colors—controversial and very precious. Just like black and white photos of local Paris scenes.

Regarding taking his own life—it was well prepared decision. His father had committed suicide. (Please do not show your kids it’s OK to give up, no matter what the circumstances.) 

It’s possible that all the spaces in his soul were filled. To his penetrating eyes people looked very transparent, and even alcohol did not make them more interesting.

He was depressed. During his fourth marriage he fell in love with someone very young. He reflected this romance in his novel Across the River and into the Trees.

He did not marry the young Italian artist, but permanently destroyed the essence of his union with Mary.

Hemingway suffered from mental illness. His wife signed the papers for his electric shock treatment, which caused him to lose his memory. It was the writer’s main asset. He gave his typewriter away.

Nature and the wonders of its seasons were no longer a joy for the writer.

He wanted to be in control and close his story himself.