Methow
By Joanna Bastian
I was not surprised when Rose Hughes answered the phone Friday morning. What did surprise me was where she answered the phone from, the not-so-Methow-like state of Tennessee.
I had dialed, and she had answered, her Methow 923 number. There are three prefixes in the Methow Valley: 996 for Winthrop, 997 for Twisp, 923 for Methow, and nobody knows what number to call for Carlton because half of Carlton, aka Libby Creek, did not even have telephones until 2000.
Carlton must be a major metropolitan area now because there are two different prefixes for Carlton landlines. To call someone on Libby Creek or Texas Creek, dial 997. To call someone on Gold Creek and further down the lower valley, dial 923. But that is a story for another day. I digress. Back to Rose and her husband, Tony, and how it came to be that they and their 923 number ended up in Tennessee.
Rose and Tony lived in a beautiful cordwood home off the grid on French Creek. Eighteen-inch-thick walls of cemented cordwood were surrounded by flowering gardens and walking paths. The home was in the middle of a park-like setting with the lower limbs cleanly cut from the tree trunks and green space spreading in all directions.
In mid-July, Tony and Rose were enjoying a Vancouver vacation when friends called to warn them of the spreading fires. They rushed home and arrived just in time to rescue Captain Morgan, the cat — but nothing else. “There was no time to stand there and think what to save,” Rose recalled. Driving through flames, they made a harrowing escape to Pateros … and later that evening, a second escape to Chelan.
The shelter in Chelan did not accept animals, so Tony and Rose decided to spend the night in the car with Captain Morgan — and then they met Dennis Hoots.
Hoots lives in Manson and was, according to Rose, “one of the first people to set up the shelter at the school in Pateros.”
When people evacuated for the second time that night to Chelan, Hoots worked to find host families who would also accept pets. “He made it so my family could stay together,” Rose said. She could not say enough good things about Hoots, who continues to help people with recovery and building efforts today.
Over the next few weeks they began sorting through the rubble and cleaning up the home site. Then the rains came and a wall of mud blocked the access road, leaving them no way to return home. The road has yet to be repaired and Rose does not know what the future holds. Today they live in Tennessee on her mother’s land.
You may have seen Tony and his “Metal Physics” creations at the Methow Valley Farmers Market. With his blowtorch, Tony would create garden art out of recycled scrap metal. Both whimsical and ferocious characters came out of his imagination. Rusty chain links, railroad spikes and saw blades transformed into giant scorpions and vultures. Dragonflies, flowers, geckos, ladybugs and everything else imaginable took shape under Tony’s flame.
Although his workshop and tools were destroyed in the fire, Tony is now able to take orders for commissioned works. He can be reached via their Methow number — (509) 923-3615.
