Joan “Willow” McCulloh frequented the wooded areas surrounding Eugene over the years, finding solace and comfort underneath the canopy. She spent much of her life in the woods, and always returned to the forest to find herself at peace. Now, the forest is one Willow short. 

McCulloh was born in Crow on Nov. 30, 1952, and passed June 5 due to heart failure — she lived to be 73 years old. She was a logger for most of her career, but eventually moved to Eugene. She spent most of her life homeless, living in the woods. Four years ago, she moved into The Nel, a 45-unit apartment complex that offers affordable housing.

A social worker who knew her described McCulloh’s love of nature and her never-ending survival skills and knowledge of plants in forested Lane County. “She was proud to be able to share that knowledge. We walked along the Amazon Trail, and she was pointing out all of the different plants that would be edible. She really enjoyed that.” The social worker asked not to be named due fear of repercussion over the nature of their relationship with McCulloh.

McCulloh had a van that she welded a stove onto. She would take her van out into the wilderness and go camping for a couple of days. “She would get away to the woods,” Willow’s friend says. Though “she liked having a place where she could come back and take a shower, and sleep in a bed,” her friend says, “ultimately, she slept best when she was out in the woods.”

She adds, “She just had compassion and curiosity. Even with her doctor, Willow was proud to say that she was her doctor’s first transgender client, she was just still so trusting with people.” 

McCulloh used to stand outside Mac’s Nightclub and Restaurant and watch the musicians perform blues and hear various singers that came to town. Her love for the blues was unmatched; she started playing in her high school band, largely self taught. She studied different blues players, and owned a collection of CDs that she would share with her friends. After McCulloh’s death, her guitar was given to Alvin Hartlauer, a friend at The Nel.  

 “She would use music to make sense of the world and would come and share lyrics with me. She enjoyed playing the guitar and I know other people at The Nel have tried to get her to play and have jam sessions,” Willlow’s friend says.

Both Hartlauer and Willow’s friends say that McCulloh was deeply kind-hearted and took the time to see the best in people, and was understanding to those who didn’t immediately accept her identity. 

McCulloh, whose birth name was John Wayne McCulloh, had an identity she called “Big John,” who she felt was her protector and seldom wanted to let out. Hartlauer says that when Big John was let out “he was angry all the time,” and McCulloh believed that the gender transition would have erased “a lot of the past anger.”

“The thing that makes me and Willow such great friends is because we knew the same areas, we’re raised out of the same part of the country out there,” Hartlauer says. “Willow was a blessed person that wanted all the same things about our government, about our politics, about people — and a lot of it because she went through that.” 

Hartlauer says McCulloh’s mental health had a cyclic nature, with periods of time when her suicidal ideation grew, and she would go into the woods. Hartlauer never knew if those periods were the last time he would be able to talk to his friend.

During an interview with Eugene Weekly, Hartlauer picked up McCulloh’s guitar and played chords from a song she was working on before she passed. He says she was looking for a reason to live, and she chose to write a song. He hummed the repeating lyrics that McCulloh wrote: “waiting around all damn day.”

“I’m very thankful for Willow. She’s shared all her hard stuff with counseling with her post-traumatic stress. She was able to help me understand in a way that made perfect sense of what I struggled with — I’m very thankful to Willow, because I could say that she became one of my biggest counselors,” Hartlauer says. 

Hartlauer said it was “hard to lose Willow” and that he had slowly been teaching himself how to play her guitar as a way to remember her. He felt that he could understand Willow more through the music and played it whenever he missed his good friend. 

“And being a friend with somebody — when they pass away, you understand the gift they gave you. You don’t really see [it] while they’re living,” Hartlauer says.