In a valley dense with riches, our greatest treasure is, perhaps, our elders. Our elders offer us their perspective, wisdom, diplomacy, and tolerance. They also gift us with their memories of life in the Methow Valley. Tipped off by the Shafer Museum, I recently had the opportunity to hear a few such recollections from the […]
Winthrop
Valley Life — Winthrop
If there’s a Methow Valley guy who understands risk, it’s Winthrop resident Josh Cole. First of all, he has two active boys (aged 4 and 6 3/4) who like to climb things. He has also spent his career managing risk in the backcountry, from his years as an instructor and program director for Outward Bound, […]
Valley Life — Winthrop
What do poison death frogs, culvert-sized snakes, fiberglass-eating piranhas and Winthrop resident Jamie Petitto have in common? If your guess is “They’re all fearsome mythical creatures found in the Amazon,” you’re close. But the answer I was fishing for is that they all co-starred in a 2021 feature film called “Jungle Run.” Filmed and released […]
Valley Life — Winthrop
When assessing something, I like to rely on scientific data when it’s available, and conjecture, speculation and personal experience when it’s not. Thus it came to be that when I took a moment to judge the quality of summer 2021 (which according to the Gregorian calendar is not yet over, but effectively is for any […]
Valley Life — Winthrop
Longtime Methow Valley resident Ann Henry will mark her 90th birthday on Aug. 24, and residents and visitors who are aware of her impact on the valley will celebrate our good fortune in having had her in our community for two-thirds of those years. Ann moved to the valley in 1960 with her young children […]
Valley Life — Winthrop
Methow Valley peeps, I hate to break it to you, but we don’t smell so great. Now folks, I mean no offense here. We bathe, we have a decent grasp of hygiene (for the most part, at least). But let’s face it — after living within a nearly perpetual cloud of smoke for a month, […]
Valley Life — Winthrop
It’s the stuff of legend: local gal wearing only a bikini and sandals jumps on a horse and rides bareback through the forest to evacuate half a dozen horses from a fire. It’s dramatic and epic — like something out of an adventure film, but not something that really could have happened, right? And yet […]
Valley Life — Winthrop
Weeks like these, it’s particularly hard to know what to write about in my column. The first week of smoke and fire, everyone is chatty, out and about, comparing notes, sharing stories, commiserating. But as we hunker down into fire season for the long haul (and for what seems to be, inconvenient truth though it […]
Valley Life: Winthrop
Their cell phones buzzed with texts and calls from friends and neighbors before the official evacuation notifications arrived, and the telltale black plumes, visible above the crowns of the pines, or across the shrub-steppe, confirmed the fires. By the time they heard sirens, they were already packing. The things they packed were largely determined by […]
Valley Life — Winthrop
One common sight on summer mornings in the Methow Valley is that of Linda Mendro training for her annual triathlon. Her land-based workouts take place on the quiet streets between the Twisp Park and TwispWorks, and she swims in Patterson Lake, all in preparation for a mini-triathlon consisting of a 13-mile bike ride, a 3-mile […]
