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PrintThe World Comes To Jackson Hole
Work performed locally is felt across the globe
Lisa Samford, executive director of the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, strives to incorporate a reverence for the pioneer wildlife documentarians, while negotiating the rapidly changing landscape of filmmaking.
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What kind of factory town is Jackson Hole? Seriously, what does the valley make—what commodity does it possess in abundance that commands valuable currency in the modern world?
In the rawhide days of yore, one could have pointed to grass-fed beef grown on the range, or maybe family vacations spent on a dude ranch. During the second half of the twentieth century, the list expanded to downhill skiing and mountaineering holidays, backcountry trekking, world-class flyfishing, nature safaris, and real estate with a Teton view.
But evermore, observers say, it’s not just physical objects that are the most coveted goods generated at the foot of the Tetons. Rather, it’s big ideas—and human visionaries carrying them out— that hold cachet, affecting the lives of people around the globe.
“Thinking about Jackson Hole the way you might conceptualize an old Rust Belt city—that prospered by manufacturing stuff in a factory with smokestacks and then exported it to market—is such a backward way of contemplating this valley’s role in the twenty-first century,” says Jonathan Schechter, a socio-economic analyst who makes his living identifying mega-trends in the Rockies.
Yes, Jackson Hole is a dale for lifestyle pilgrims, some with Learjets and palatial trophy homes. In terms of amenities, Schechter notes, the valley also enjoys “an embarrassment of riches” made possible by civic-minded benefactors drawn to the setting. But what’s more intriguing, he says, is observing how the environment here inspires people to try to do better elsewhere. Intellectual capital is the valley’s most enduring raw material.
“People talk about the ‘the power of place’ here,” says Lisa Samford, director of the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival. A documentary filmmaker herself, she has been involved with projects focusing on Wallace Stegner, the Dalai Lama, and Jackson Hole conservationist Mardy Murie. In fact, it was Mardy’s husband, Olaus Murie, the pioneering elk biologist, who first wrote about Jackson Hole’s power of place from the couple’s log home in Moose.
The entire article can be read in the Winter 2012 issue of Jackson Hole Magazine.
