Author and anthropologist Julie Tate-Libby knows a thing or two about the Methow Valley.
She spent her childhood visiting the region. She fell in love with the outdoor spaces and was delighted when her family moved to the Methow during her adolescence.
She’s seen several waves of newcomers to the area and watched the region change over the years.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, she examined the cultural shifts through a series of essays, both as an anthropologist and a longtime Methow Valley resident.
SPR’s Owen Henderson sat down with Tate-Libby to talk about her new book, “The Next Best Place.”
This interview was edited for clarity and brevity.
OH: In the introduction, you write that the book is a love letter to a mountain town that you used to know—or that you once knew. You also advise newcomers to the area to, I believe the phrase you used was, ‘tread softly.’
JTL: Yeah.
OH: And both of those struck me as I was starting your book. What prompted you to describe your own book that way and to give that particular piece of advice?
JTL: Well, it was interesting. So, the book—I had a friend read it about three years ago, and I said, ‘What'd you think?’
And she said, ‘It was your love letter.’
And I was like, ‘Oh, oh, I like that.’ You know? So, I incorporated that into the title and it really is a love letter. I love the Methow. It's my home, and it's my community. And I love it very much.
And so, I think some of the changes that I see occurring, you know, are—I wouldn't say they're necessarily sad to me, but they're different. And I feel like the ethos is changing a little bit.
And so I feel like I wanted to bring something that reflected on those changes and that it's a bit of nostalgic, you know—it's a little bit lamenting the changes, but I mean it in the best way possible.
And, you know, there are people moving in. And I think as a newcomer to, say, Hawaii or other places that I have also lived, I want to be mindful to myself to, you know, be aware and to be—and to tread softly when you enter a community.
Rural communities, you know, are special places, and to be aware of the people already there and kind of what you're encountering is to be a good neighbor.
OH: How would you describe your own relationship with the people and the culture and the land of the Methow Valley over the years as someone who grew up there, but also moved away and came back?
JTL: Yeah, I mean, I grew up in Bridgeport, which is an hour south when I was like, you know, really young, and we would drive up to the Methow every weekend and go backpacking and go hunting and go fishing my parents were both very avid wilderness people. And so we grew up, you know, just really exploring the mountains. So my relationship to the Methow was just, I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I loved the mountains. I loved the land.
And then we moved there in 1988. Actually, I was 11 and I just was on cloud nine. I thought like, you know, I had just found home.
We moved to this beautiful farm down in Carlton and it was magical. It was just magical. So I think my early feeling of the Methow was just exploring all the mountains and the trails really. I grew up close to the land.
I had this secret place I would go to called Puckett Creek and it was on the rancher's property. So I write about that and trespassing on his land. And that just kind of became my sort of secret garden. I just went up there every day. So that was my early relationship. And then as I got older, you know, I took my first trip.
I went to India when I was 17 and then to Nepal at 19 and then 22. So I had several big trips to Asia and I was just fascinated by the poverty that I encountered there. And so I think I was kind of primed to see that.
And also that sparked my interest in anthropology. Over the years when I came back, you know, I would leave and then come back again and leave for college and then come back again. I've always been really interested in how people group themselves.
My friends over the years were a lot of the '90s migrants who moved in. That was kind of my cohort. I graduated in 1995 from high school and all these really cool people were moving in and they were organic gardening and I just was kind of fascinated by them. They were all quite a bit older than me. So they were about 10 years older. And I would say those are probably my closest friends now would be the kind of the '90s cohort that moved to the Methow in the late 90s, early 2000s.
It's always been a very warm, welcoming place. But like all communities, like people, you know, there's, you know, flaws. Everybody's not perfect and a community isn't either.
OH: You got your PhD studying a concept called amenity migration, and it plays quite a role in this particular book. First, let's just kind of level set. Why don't you define amenity migration for us?
JTL: Okay. Well, amenity migration is different than other kinds of migration. Most migrations people move for work or for family.
They call them the push and pull factors. You know, famine and drought and civil war could be push factors. People get pushed out. Pull factors would be jobs and family and things like that.
But an amenity migration is different because people move for lifestyle. They move for, like, intangible assets. Places that tend to be populated by amenity migrants are beautiful.
They're usually by national parks. They have a lot of outdoor recreation potential and things like that. So, I think that the pull of those places is kind of what you're looking at.
And then they kind of become this message for this place or something. They kind of have this brand like this outdoor recreation area or something like that.
So, amenity migration as a concept, I think, is just that it pulls people for different reasons that have never been really pulled that way before.
OH: How has amenity migration played out in the Methow?
JTL: Well, I think, you know, there was a ski hill years ago, back in the '70s, they were trying to put a downhill ski resort into Mazama. And that was a huge deal when we first moved to the Methow. It was still kind of going back and forth and people did want it and people didn't want it.
And it was a big kind of development controversy. And I think, you know, that was finally put to rest in 2002, I believe. And in lieu of that, I think it's become sort of a center for amenity migration.
So, there is no big development. And tourism is sort of a secondary industry, but the real industry is actually building and second homes.
OH: With amenity migration, something you touch on in the book is the way that changes how people choose who they associate with, their identity markers—their reference groups, I believe is the term.
Explain that a little bit for me of what is a reference group and how has something like amenity migration in the Methow changed how people are associating themselves?
JTL: Right. Well, in traditional, you know—as an anthropologist—in traditional family systems, people associate themselves based on their kinship. You know, ‘What's your last name?’ ‘Oh, you're from that family.’
And I think even up until, you know, the ‘80s and even the mid ‘90s, even in the Methow, people were still like—they had the homesteader families or your last name or ‘What creek do you live up?’ ‘Oh, you're Twisp River or you're McFarland Creek’ or whatever.
And so those were kind of the social identifiers before. And now I think with amenity migration, people identify based on a reference group is a group of people with similar interests and tastes and hobbies, basically.
So, you know, people group themselves around what they like to do for fun, for recreation. And that's really different than the traditional sort of land-based systems. And I talk about in the book, like living in Hawaii, where it still is a very kinship-based economy and a kinship based system.
And in Hawaii, you know, people all know each other by their last name, and they're related to hundreds of people all over the island. And they're very proud of that. You know, being from the island and being related to somebody is—that is a marker of belonging. And that's empowerment in Hawaii. And that's changed in the Methow.
OH: I was curious about your perspective as someone who has lived in Hawaii as an outsider and who's lived in the Methow both as a local and as an outsider. Talk to me about the differences you've seen in terms of how amenity and migration has affected local culture.
JTL: I think in Hawaii, in the area that we live, there's also amenity migrants, but they're mostly retirees. And they're not super wealthy. You know, they have pensions, but it is a retiree community. And it doesn't change—it doesn't shape the economy as much as I've seen elsewhere.
I think in Hawaii, I talk about in the book, people come there, but they don't really change the culture. The culture is still really rooted in family. And, you know, hunting for pig and fishing, the rural culture is still really embedded in this kinship system.
I think in the Methow, incoming migrants have really changed what it's known for. You know, the areas that are more popular, Mazama has more ski trails, you know, people want to live on the ski trail. Winthrop is kind of the old west town and stuff.
And then, you know, anything Twisp and south has become more low income. And so, you know, you can see it geographically, kind of this separation of people based on interest and class.
OH: One thing you discuss quite a bit in the book is the nonprofit sector that has grown up in the Methow Valley. And so tell me a little bit more about the socioeconomic class split, as you have observed it.
JTL: Well, I think in the Methow, there's like 118 nonprofits or something. And there's only 7,000 full time people or 10,000 altogether, full time and part time. And so that's a really high number of nonprofits, only 37 pay an executive director.
So, it's not that big. But I think that amenity migration has really influenced, you know, the nonprofits. They have their board of directors, and a lot of them are composed of people who have just moved in who want to be part of the Methow. And, you know, there's a lot of good positive energy around that.
And I think there's also some misconceptions. And so I think the nonprofits are supported by donors. And so that kind of leads this whole other—it's like a whole secondary economy, you know, where it's the business community, they're trying to make a living.
I had two businesses in Winthrop, one when I was 22. And the other one when I was in my 30s. And, you know, it's hard to make a living in Winthrop. It's hard to run a business.
Tourism is a very seasonal industry in the Methow. You know, summers are busy. Winters, if the snow's not good, winters are slow, you know. It can be almost a ghost town in Winthrop. And so, it is a hard place to make a living, no matter what you're doing.
And so, I think fundamentally, the class difference is people who are economically tied to the Methow Valley. You know, if you're tied to it, and you make your money from the Methow, you know, you're going to see it in a completely different way.
And I found that living in Hawaii as well. I had never worked in Hawaii until about three years ago. And then I got a job teaching at a public high school, full time. And that was a deep dive into knowing Hawaii in a way that I had never known before.
So, I feel like being kind of an outsider in Hawaii, and kind of getting into it and working there and everything has given me a lot of perspective as well. And then reflecting on that to the Methow has been interesting.
And that's some of the things I wanted to write about in the book, the differences between being an outsider one place and an insider in another place.
OH: You were also an educator in the Methow Valley at a college. And I'm curious what insights that gave you?
JTL: Yeah, well, I started teaching at Wenatchee Valley, there's a branch campus in Omak, when I was 29. I just loved teaching there.
And I still teach there online to this day. But I think the difference between the two valleys was so extreme, it was shocking. And so, from a very early age, I started seeing, you know, this influx of money and wealth and really positive changes in the Methow Valley.
Gentrification, which is—you know—can be really wonderful. And then these areas that are just getting left behind, and Omak and Okanagan are, you know, they're poor communities, and they're poorer today than they were even 20 years ago.
So, I think what I see happening, and I think what we should all be concerned about—for the whole country—is the wealth gap is just widening, you know.
And money makes money. So, if you have money, you're richer today than you were 20 years ago. And if you don't, if you're working paycheck to paycheck, you're poorer today than you were 20 years ago, because you're dependent on a paycheck, and the cost of everything else has gotten a lot higher.
And it is concerning. So, I think it feels a little more desperate to me, sort of socially, both maybe in the Methow and in Hawaii. I think in a lot of rural communities, people are getting left behind.
OH: You are a resident in the Methow Valley. You mentioned 7,000 to 10,000 people, depending on how you count it. I'm from a small farm town. I know that word travels quite fast in places like that. And you are very frank with your opinions and your observations.
It is a critical eye, but not an uncaring eye, toward your home region. How have people in the Methow been reacting to the book?
JTL: Well, I think it was a little bit of a rough landing. There was an article that came out in the newspaper that was not flattering for the book.
And I was quite devastated when it came out. I almost thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I'm going to have to fly back to Hawaii and just scrap the whole thing.’
But I persevered. And we launched the book a couple weeks ago. And it was a great reception. People were very gracious.
And I think they're interested in the book. And I think they're curious. And everybody I've talked to who has actually read the book or started to read the book has been very positive. I think that people really do love the book. I think the press in the paper was unfortunate.
But you know, I think it's hard for people to talk about class. It's kind of a taboo subject. And I've never really understood that. Because to me, as an anthropologist, it's always been very interesting.
My favorite authors, Stephanie Land, ‘Nickel and Dimed’, and then the other one that I read while I was working on this was Billionaire Wilderness, Justin Farrell, and that’s about Teton County. It was a fabulous look at the upper class in that area.
And I just kind of assumed that everybody would be as interested in it as I was and would find it as fascinating. And I also, I chose to write with humor. And so I thought that would explore these issues and just make it kind of funny and make it a little bit more approachable.
You know, I think people find it funny. I also think people are somewhat uncomfortable with talking about it.
