I was instinctively aware that once the snow melted, Gary and I would have absolutely little in common, other than the fact that we both liked skiing and we both lived in Southern California. Skiing is a great equalizer. Money is not.

Gary Cooper was a very talented and financially successful movie actor. In 1947 I was living in my four-foot by eight-foot teardrop trailer in the Sun Valley parking lot and skiing seven days a week for less than twenty cents a day.

However, when all of us were standing at the top of the mountain deciding which run to ski down, we were all the same and money in the bank was not a part of our interactions. Which person had the bucks really didn't matter in that situation, and it doesn't really matter in many situations, in my opinion.

In 1947, after World War II, being successful was becoming equated with being rich, and vice versa. Unfortunately, already then, being "rich" was slowly becoming a negative term to many people who weren't rich and the press, in general. This is the case today. Many people want to be rich but dislike the rich, for no particular reason.

I think that a better working definition of the rich is that they are "economically stratified." They may or may not be "successful." It depends on how you define that term, which is another subject for another time.

Lately I have read numerous newspaper articles with statements like: "The haven for the rich and famous is the Yellowstone Club in Montana with its gated community; this guards the super rich from being bothered by less fortunate people." Such things are written by people who don't know much about the subject.

I signed on as the director of skiing at the Yellowstone Club two years before the first lift was installed. I did it because its 14,000 acres of private property could continue to provide a wilderness experience for my children and my grandchildren.

At the time, I was betting that my over-half-a-century reputation as an extreme sports, movie producer and my own vision of the Yellowstone Club could someday become a reality. This has happened, and then some. And the "rich" members have a lot in common that has nothing to do with money.

Almost every member I know graduated from college with a lot of student debt to pay off. And many of them, while working at their first real job, found or developed a new way to do the same thing better. So they started working six and seven days a week, ten to sixteen hours per day. That's how they ended up in the club.

The stories I hear about some of the early Microsoft days are something. I'm told a lot of young lions slept on the floor in their cubicles a few hours each night because they were so excited about what they were doing. And, sure enough, slowly economic stratification began to separate them from their friend--the guys and gals who only wanted to work eight hours a day, five days a week, for whatever reason. It's a choice to make.

The point is, very simply, that most of the people I know with extra money have it because they earned it the hard way. There is not much magic involved.

I have considered myself economically stratified ever since the age of fourteen when I delivered the Los Angeles Shopping News to Walt Disney's home in the Los Feliz hills adjoining Griffith Park. I had started paying my own way.

Then, in 1950, I borrowed $100 from each of four friends to launch my motion picture company. (I couldn't find just one person who would loan me the necessary $400.) So I took a risk. The risk-taking and work have provided me with some economic stratification right to this day. They have helped me get to the top of the mountain(s) of my choice, whenever I want to go there. But everyone is equal once they are on the top of any mountain.

We all get to use gravity.


Editor's Note: This is one in a Tahoetopia series written by Warren Miller, legendary ski cinematographer. For other columns by Warren, click on Warren Miller.