Author and anthropologist Julie Tate-Libby has put pen to paper to talk about an area very dear to her: Washington’s Methow Valley. Last summer, she spoke with SPR’s Owen Henderson about her book.
This interview is lightly edited for length and clarity.
Owen Henderson: 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 is, tread softly. 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?
Julie Tate-Libby: 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, 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 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.
I feel like I wanted to bring something that reflected on those changes and that is a bit of nostalgic. It's a little bit lamenting the changes, but I mean it in the best way possible.
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 be aware and to tread softly when you enter a community. Rural communities 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: So 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. 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. 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 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 and 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: 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. It was a big kind of development controversy. And I think 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 what is a reference group and how has something like amenity migration in the Methow changed how people are associating themselves?
JTL: In anthropology, 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 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 I talk about in the book, like living in Hawaii, where it still is a very kinship-based economy and a kinship-based system. In Hawaii, 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. Being from the island and being related to somebody 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. 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 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, the areas that are more popular. Mazama has more ski trails. People want to live on the ski trail. Winthrop is kind of the Old West town and stuff. And then, anything Twisp and south is, has become more low income. And so you can see it geographically, kind of this separation of people based on interest and class.
OH: One thing you discussed quite a bit in the book is the nonprofit sector that has grown up in the Methow Valley. Tell me a little bit more about the socioeconomic class split, as you have observed it.
JTL: 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. 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 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. There's a lot of good positive energy around that and I think there's also some misconceptions. I think the nonprofits are supported by donors and so that kind of leads this whole other, it's like a whole secondary economy 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. Summers are busy. Winters, if the snow's not good, winters are slow. 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.
I think, fundamentally, the class difference is people who are economically tied to the Methow Valley. If you're tied to it, and you make your money from the Methow, 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. 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.
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 difference between being an outsider one place and an insider in another place.
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: 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 gonna 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.
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.
