Lucy Woods

Lucy Wood’s life motto was: Life is Camp

She loved life. Loved the uncomplicated beauty of the natural world. Of morning. Of light reflecting off water.

She lived her life truly as an artist. Always collecting color and beauty in all the things she did, even if it was just a scrap of fabric that caught her eye or a conversation with the check-out clerk at the grocery store.

Her life glowed with her own kind of kid-grinning-in-the-sun-on-the-camp-dock-with-a-piece-of-juicy-watermelon, wet-from-the-water, one-arm-slung-around-a-grinning-dog-type of delight.

Lucy was born in Washington State and grew up in the Pacific Northwest, loving the moisture, abundant green, and blackberries. She told stories of repeatedly sneaking over the neighbors’ fences to feed carrots to their horses and ride them, when their owners weren’t looking.

She lived in Mexico for a year as an early teenager, in San Miguel De Allende, and spoke often about its impact on the rest of her life.

She spent her high school years in the San Fernando Valley, embracing the warmth of the California climate and riding her bike with packs of neighborhood dogs across the green rolling hills. She was an animal whisperer. You could ask anyone who watched her for five minutes with any four-legged friend.

Lucy had many adventures. She was kicked out of her mother’s sorority at the University of Washington for chaining her 10-speed bicycle to the front porch one too many times.

In her 20’s she lived in New York City, San Luis Obispo, Oakland, CA, and Lake Tahoe with a group of friends, to name a few. Later, she lived in Florida, in Louisiana, Olympia, WA, Pennsylvania, Fairbanks, Alaska, Santa Fe, NM, and Colorado.

She continually wrote poetry and prose, led and taught many writers’ groups, and was featured in Pace Magazine at 19 as “One to Watch”. She was a camp counselor at Four Winds on Orcas Island. Became the women’s coordinating director at Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, and walked across the country from LA to Washington D.C. in 1986 with The Great Peace March for Nuclear Disarmament along with her then-husband Eric Darby and their two young sons, Logan, aged 3, and Cooper, aged 7.

After the peace march, they settled back into life in Paonia, Colorado. She took on half their home business, building custom lamps and shades, homeschooling and homesteading, raising goats and sheep, and feeding their family from the garden. In 1991, she welcomed her third child, a daughter, Elizabeth.

She and Eric divorced in 2003 after 20 years of marriage but eventually found a tender type of companionship that lasted the rest of her life.

Lucy thought deeply about everything. She loved a good book and a good deep dive, whether it was metaphysical, holistic, astrological, or scientific; she got so much joy from fully wrapping her mind around it.

Lucy loved adventure. A trip to the thrift store, a float down an illegal irrigation ditch–– punctuated with whoops of laughter. A road trip starting before dawn, headlights pricking in the dark as the world came slowly awake around her. She loved the Pacific Ocean, the waves lapping at the sand, the smell of sun in eucalyptus leaves.

She spent the second half of her life immersed in color and painting: pastel, acrylic, and watercolor. The canvases lined her tiny house as she lay on her hospice bed. Like hundreds of windows into how she has always seen the world. Snapshots of beauty. Of light dancing on water. Of wild land, and children laughing and running after their dogs. Life is camp.

In her final weeks, Lucy kept coming back to the vitalness of creativity and how each of us has within us our own unique and powerful gift to share with the world. She often grew teary talking about it, speaking with a certainty she hadn’t always found in her day-to-day life, that our creative gifts are what will heal our aching world. Please consider sharing your light, your gifts with the world, in her honor.

Lucy means light, and she passed away peacefully at home from cancer just as morning began to break across the valley she had spent the last forty years calling home. Her daughter Elizabeth was with her.

She is survived by her three siblings, Courtney Stephens (Spouse Skip Stephens), Gym Woods (Spouse Mercedes Garcia Gutierrez), John Woods (Spouse Kelly Woods); by her ex-husband Eric Darby, her kids: Cooper Woods (Spouse Larkspur Deane), Logan Woods-Darby, Elizabeth Woods-Darby (Spouse Benjamin Collins), Grandchildren: Alice and Pomeline, Halona, Ellis and a new grandbaby due at the end of August.

Lucy’s celebration of life will occur on July 27, 2025, at the family property in Paonia. In lieu of flowers, please make a donation in her honor to an animal rescue of your choice or to hospice.