Starting in the late 1960s, a motley group of young poets and painters took over abandoned shacks bordering the mouth of the Skagit River within walking distance to La Conner. They lived there for a decade without the burden of rent, running water or electricity.
As a fellow-traveler from that time observed in the catalog for Fishtown and the Skagit River, an exhibit at the Museum of Northwest Art, through Oct. 3:
I never lived in Fishtown. I couldn't afford the rent.
Yeah, I know, the place was well beyond the reach of landlords and realtors, but let's face it, the wages of Zen are not inconsiderable: all that chopping wood and hauling water.
Fishtown disappeared as property values rose, bulldozed out of existence in 1980 and leaving a number of curatorial choices for its examination. Curator Kathleen Moles chose inclusion. Anybody with mud on his (or more rarely her) cracked boots who lived lean and wet on that river has a place in the show, if anything he made happens to survive, even on a postcard.
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