Focusing through the Lens

The Skagit Valley attracts photographers. Our famous flowers and migratory birds, not to mention the rivers and mountains and sea, make it a place where beauty can be captured by the lens in many ways. I started following Skagit photographers before moving here and soon after settling in I was lucky enough to meet a few, including Nancy Crowell.

We have worked beside each other as local journalists and share more interests than I realized before spending the afternoon with her traveling across the valley scouting birds and flowers. Like so many people I like to feature here, Nancy’s personal story intersects nicely with the place and her commitments to creativity. Although I thought I knew her already, I discovered many new aspects to her biography and creativity. 

You can find her work on her website and Instagram.

The Garden as Metaphor

Nancy wanted to meet at the Discovery Garden, operated by the Skagit County Master Gardener Foundation. I thought it was just because it’s a convenient meeting spot, but she had more in mind. 

Nancy gardens a small plot there that she calls The Meadow, a space with an intentional unruliness and natural beauty. Wild strawberries creep along the ground while dead grasses remain uncut until insects have emerged. 

This is a work in progress, and it’s meant to be messy. When I first started, I had an idea what gardening was. When I was a kid, my grandfather always planted a vegetable garden, and he planted sweet peas for me. It instilled this love of flowers. And I thought of a perfect garden as an English garden — a sweet little cottage English garden with lots of flowers.

Nancy is a voracious learner. Encountering horticulturists and landscape designers in person or through documentaries, Nancy imagined new ways to garden. Then, she watched “Five Seasons,” a documentary about Piet Oudolf and was inspired. 

In this movie, he said things I never heard any gardener say. The line that stands out to me is, "I love dead plants." 

His concept was to plant a garden that would be interesting all year round and be left alone in winter. 

The evolution is reflected in Nancy’s shift from the imagined perfect English garden to this unkempt space rich with life — a metaphor for Nancy’s life and art.

From Mississippi to the Pacific Northwest

Born in Jackson, Mississippi, during the civil rights movement with liberal parents, Nancy felt disconnected from her surroundings. “There’s no love lost in Mississippi,” she states simply and describes sharply in this essay. 

When I was three years old, I made a desk for myself and pretended to write. I always wanted to be a writer.