Permaculture
Paul Bartels
I want to call him right now. But I do not press the numbers, as my thumb hovers over the telephone keypad. He did not respond to any of the three messages I left before we moved, so why would he answer now? Time. I look outside at the freshly planted Vanderwolf Limber Pine that Pedro tucked into the Earth this morning. Darkening clouds form around Roxy Ann Peak in the distance, suggestive of more rain. The Vanderwolf that Kyle planted near the back fence line in our last home was also framed by the eastern sky. The Great Plains unfolded behind that tree, rather than the foothills of the Cascade Range. I thought of the pink-orange mornings that would climb above the late winter horizon, reaching out to light the tentative candles of the pine nestled behind the barren grey branches of Mountain Mahogany. Kyle had jackhammered a basin for the tree in the Palmer Sandstone Formation that stood only eleven inches beneath the surface. He took such care with how he placed it along the sloping contours of the yard, that the Vanderwolf grew nearly two feet in its first year. I wondered how it was doing, nine months since we left Colorado for Oregon; I hoped that I would hear Kyle’s voice again.
Pedro’s movements reminded me of the good days when Kyle was relaxed, living in the moment that we were sharing. As Pedro drove the iron rod into the sandstone he found after a foot of digging, he looked over at me with a smile. “The old guys,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, “they never want to try anything new.” I nodded knowingly. “Watch this,” he said as he found the setting he wanted on the spray nozzle. He shot some water into the hole, smirking. “The weak sandstone like this falls apart with a little bit of water.” He dropped the hose and picked up the six-foot rod and fractured the basin into big, chunky pieces. “See. Nothing to it, it just gives up,” Pedro narrated with satisfaction as I began shoveling subdued sandstone out of the basin. “Now, the old guys, they just want to beat on the rock all day or something. They won’t listen,” he said through a chuckle. “You’re going to be able to lift your arms above your head when your fifty,” I added, sharing his laugh. “You’re damn straight,” Pedro agreed.
I glanced over at the unruly Juniper that squatted next to half of the front of our house. I decided to see whether he liked me or not. “Would you help me take that mess out?” I asked. “Man, I hate those things, too. You can’t do anything to make them look good,” he said, shaking his head at the shrub. “Yeah, it’s the way the raccoons like them that bothers me the most,” I admitted, “and we have dogs.”
“Seriously, that thing’s got to go,” Pedro agreed. He looked directly at me briefly. “You’ve got my number, right?” I nodded. “Don’t call the nursery. I’ll help you on a Saturday,” he said, bending down to pick up the hose again. “You got kids?” he asked smiling.
It was that kind of Saturday arrangement that forged the friendship with Kyle. His initial visit was to plant two pine trees, including the Vanderwolf, and three Saskatoon Serviceberry shrubs into the sandstone. During that visit, he glanced at three tons of riprap that Roxanne and I had staged in our backyard. “What are you going to do with that granite?” he asked me an hour into our work.
“I’m going to build a planter for the Nanking Cherries.” I gestured to the pots sitting in the shade of the house. “We wanted a living screen because we can see over the neighbor’s fence.” We looked at that view together in silence, taking in the two-tiered lawn with a pre-fabricated block retaining wall the color of Pepto Bismol.
“Fuck,” he said quietly.
“Yeah, that makes me a little bit too aware of living in suburbia,” I agreed.
“You guys have such interesting structure to work with here,” Kyle said, “Their landscape probably wasn’t that different before that happened.”
“We really want to augment the beautiful native shrubs we have here,” I elaborated. “We want to tear out the lawn and plant other xeric, drought-tolerant, and native plants.”
“Amen,” he said, “Are you open to direction?”
“We would love it.”
“Can I come back next week and sketch something out?”
“Sounds great.”
“Do you mind if we do this as just an arrangement between you guys and me?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, we’ll do this together in my spare time. Sound like fun?”
“Absolutely.”
“I get tired of installing lawns with flower bed borders. This will be a blast. I’m a permaculturist after all.”
“A what?”
“I’ll bring a book for you to read when I come to do the sketch,” Kyle said through a Grinchlike smile. My own excitement was growing, even though I had no idea what exactly we were getting into. “For now,” Kyle said, “let me give you a preview with that granite and those Nankings.”
He immediately took to the northern slope next to the fence, cutting into the lawn. “This lawn will never have enough to drink, especially on a slope,” Kyle instructed. “Grab a hoe and copy what I am doing in the patch below me.” I struggled to keep up and mimic the way he cut a terrace into the sloping lawn. “That’s okay, but think about how that space can receive and retain water,” he counseled. “See how I’m allowing the angle of the slope to drain toward the terrace?” After twenty minutes we had a three-tiered terrace system held together by hand-set granite walls on the downhill side. He then cut shallow trenches in the remaining uphill lawn that followed the contour of the land. “This way when it rains really hard,” he said, “the swales will direct water to these new shrubs rather than just making a run for the street.”
“Swales?” I asked.
“The incisions we just made in the lawn,” Kyle said, smiling broadly. “Think of them as riverbeds just waiting for the water.” I nodded, beginning to see the holistic approach unfolding.
And unfold that holistic vision did. Drainage went from being a liability to a strength in the backyard, as Kyle ensured the torrential rains that we experienced so frequently in July and August would be directed to hydrate the landscape, “capturing,” in Kyle’s words, what precious water we were given in the high desert climate. We pruned the Elm trees to allow more light to reach the understory plants and still provide dappled shade in the afternoon. I cut most of the larger branches into eight-inch segments that became decorative borders around planting beds and bird feeders. Kyle used smaller branches as soil amendments when we planted new trees and shrubs in the yard. Natural wood mulch replaced artificially colored bark, feeding the earth as it slowly decomposed and helping the sandy soil retain water. Sagging railroad tie borders were cut and repurposed into frames for steps usually seen on a hiking trail on our yard’s southern slope.
The crown jewel of Kyle’s transformative vision was the three-tiered patio that flowed from the back sliding-glass door down the slope of the yard. The original concrete patio needed to be removed because it was draining toward the house’s foundation. But Kyle resolved to reuse the concrete. Rather than jackhammering it to pieces and hauling it away, he cut the patio with a concrete saw into tiles. I then roughed out the edges with a rock hammer to soften and naturalize the look. We used portions of the patio that could not be cut as base material. Kyle hand set the granite rock walls that held the patio together, and we tamped road base and fine pebbles, called breeze, to level the fill and ensure proper angles for drainage. The tiles were then arranged atop this base, with more breeze filling the gaps. The top tier took the shape of a circle and featured tiles arranged as a sun emerging from the horizon. The second tier was more elliptical and had tiles that formed the shape of a dragonfly, while the third tier was a planter filled with native flowers and decorative shrubs.
Permaculture, I learned from Kyle, is more of an ecological mindset than a landscaping philosophy. It is restorative, self-sustaining, and committed to rebuilding the webs of life undone by common transformation of landscapes for human habitation. In a suburban neighborhood, we typically saw at least eighteen different species of birds each day, including uncommon migrants in our part of town, like Western Tanagers and Bullock’s Orioles. We left the main trunk of a dead Elm so the White-Breasted Nuthatches and Downy Woodpeckers could browse on the teeming insect life it supported. Rabbits and Squirrels made their homes in the yard, while Deer frequently slept in cover provided by the vegetation.
At its core, permaculture should lead to ecosystems that no longer rely on active human intervention. Kyle taught me a different way of seeing and valuing the natural world, and we developed a meaningful friendship during the many hours of laboring side-by-side in the yard. One afternoon, we were moving large boulders together up the south slope of the lot when Kyle began saying, “Pole, pole” (pronounced poh-lay poh-lay).
“Huh,” I grunted through my clenched teeth, trying to turn the boulder over.
“Slowly,” he translated, “slowly.”
We paused briefly, leaning against the two-hundred-pound rock, looking at Pike’s Peak to the west. “It’s Swahili. The guys who taught me how to use a hoe in Africa would always say that at the pace they needed to coordinate their efforts. Like ‘pohhhhhh-laaaaay.’ It’s so everyone is synchronized during a task that requires cooperation.”
“Interesting,” I said. “Standing here reminds me of a Swahili proverb that says ‘mountains do not meet, but people do.’”
“Yeah,” he replied. “I heard that a couple of times when I was there.”
“Well, I never really understood it until I came to Colorado. Here the mountains do not form a bowl like back home in Oregon.”
“It’s not meant to be interpreted literally, Paul.”
“Yeah, well, I can be a little ‘pole.’”
Because of his time learning agricultural techniques in Africa, Kyle was a firm believer in doing things on what he liked to call “a human scale.” We avoided using machinery whenever possible, and the difficult labor actually drew us closer together. In a number of African cultures, there is a saying that translates roughly to mean “a person is a person through other persons,” or “I am because we are.” Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu has long espoused the philosophy known as Ubuntu, which elaborates on this foundational principle, emphasizing mutual dependence, sharing, open dialogue, and interpersonal encounter. It’s a radical form of communitarianism and interdependence. A permaculture for human interrelation.
In Ubuntu, human existence reaches fulfillment as part of a whole, which stands in stark contrast to the neurotic competition, individualism, acquisitiveness, and fearful paranoia plaguing so much of contemporary American association. Kyle’s dream for his own ten-acre property is to build a communal work cooperative, where people could live simply in community in exchange for subsistence labor. There would be vegetable gardens, fruit orchards, and small-scale animal husbandry. Any remaining produce would be sold in a store and cafeteria open to the general public. He also planned to grow container plants and trees for the nursery that his mother and uncle owned in town. Over two years, Kyle slowly shared the details of his vision and admitted the struggles he was having with the county planning board. His property, which was once bordered by other like-sized rural parcels, was quickly being surrounded by new housing developments. The planned communities that were his new neighbors did not share his alternative vision for human association. I could tell that the uphill fight with forces beyond his control was taking its toll on Kyle. Many people in our society would like to make their lives into mountains. Monoliths that stand apart from others, intimidating those beneath their soaring slopes.
I empathized with Kyle’s frustrations, especially after a new housing development broke ground about a thousand feet from our beloved backyard. Through the open arms of the Ponderosa canopy, I watched earth movers strip the land of native vegetation. The Rabbit population in our yard suddenly exploded, as the strands in the web of life collapsed under the burdens of “progress” down the ridge.
“I see it as improving land that is just sitting there useless,” the developer had said without any sense of irony in a heated neighborhood meeting. The closeness that I felt with that “useless” land opened greater distance with neighbors who shrugged the development off as inevitable. I withdrew more into myself, seeing our beautiful yard with a growing sadness–knowing how fragile any individual attempt at permaculture would be in a culture that had long left behind a sustainable human scale of desire.
Like Kyle, I had been struggling with large forces and ideas. Even within myself, the dominant view surfaces. I look out where the Juniper once hugged the house, knowing with clear eyes how I too participate in removing strands from the web of life. Lizards scattered as I removed limbs that draped the ground. I can still feel the soft contours of a bird’s nest in my cupped hands. I long to meet the world as a person among persons, but I too remain so much like a mountain.
Perhaps that is why Kyle disappeared from our life almost as quickly as he entered it. I wonder what I removed or destroyed, unknowingly collapsing a larger web. The thing that matters most, from my perspective, is that his departure left a void that cannot be repaired or replaced. Certain people, just like particular species in an ecosystem, create a ripple effect when they disappear. One of the most important tenets of Ubuntu, one emphasized by Tutu during the struggle to dismantle apartheid in South Africa, is forgiveness and reconciliation. I have prayed often, trying to understand what might have gone wrong, hoping for eventual reconciliation. Not unlike the fragile permaculture of an individual suburban plot, human relationships seem to continue to require active intervention and remedy. When I looked out on the yard we created together, something was now missing. Kyle. It wasn’t “mine,” something he received wages to help bring into being. It was a co-construction, one created in concert with the land and its diverse more-than-human community. Even though the Ponderosas, Nuthatches, Rabbits, Mountain Mahogany, Squirrels, and Flickers continued to share the space, Kyle’s absence was keenly felt.
I never really got the chance to say “goodbye” when we left Colorado for Oregon, as he had already disappeared two months before we even listed the house. We hugged that last June evening like usual before he drove home. I am not even sure if he knows we are gone. Or worse, I worry that he found out that we left because he went to the house and found someone else living there. Roxanne and I agonized about leaving Colorado in large part because of the yard that Kyle played such a vital role in creating. Most of our daily happiness came from interacting with the rich community of life just beyond the walls of our house. Friendship with Kyle was woven into those interactions, as I thought of him when the resident Towhee scoured the mulch for food or when Orioles flocked to the Currant fruit.
Yesterday a Bullock’s Oriole landed on the stand of Red Hot Pokers in the back of our new yard in Oregon. He was after the nectar. It was the first time in three decades of living in the valley that I have seen an Oriole in town. I almost called Kyle three times, phone in hand, but the thought of waiting through the rings until his voicemail hurt too much. Maybe he had lost interest in us as impulsively as he became a part of our lives. Maybe he rushed into another romantic relationship that ended badly and he feels embarrassed for dropping out on us. Maybe he had another brush with addiction. I only wish I knew, so that I could be there for my friend. If my own actions or inactions were to blame, I wanted to seek forgiveness and work toward reconciliation.
As Pedro finished shaping the soil around the newly planted Vanderwolf, I wondered if I should have gone to Kyle’s house before we left Colorado. It seemed like a step too far when he didn’t respond to messages. Then I considered the Oriole sighting from another angle. It was at that time that I tested the situation with Pedro. I didn’t want to be one of “the old guys” who “never tried anything new” and just kept beating on the rock all day long. So, I opened the door once again to another.
“You know what I struggle with?” Pedro said plainly. “Anxiety.” I gave him my full attention. “I started having these panic attacks and didn’t even know why,” he confided. “Luckily I have a really cool doctor who gave me some pills but also gave me a book and talked me through a change of mindset so I didn’t need the pills anymore.” I nodded slowly. “He helped me understand that there’s a lot that I can’t control and gave me some strategies for how to work through that.” Pedro has no idea how much his experience spoke to me in that moment, but I will tell him about Kyle some day. “Give me a call,” he said as he packed the wheelbarrow onto the trailer.
Paul Bartels
I want to call him right now. But I do not press the numbers, as my thumb hovers over the telephone keypad. He did not respond to any of the three messages I left before we moved, so why would he answer now? Time. I look outside at the freshly planted Vanderwolf Limber Pine that Pedro tucked into the Earth this morning. Darkening clouds form around Roxy Ann Peak in the distance, suggestive of more rain. The Vanderwolf that Kyle planted near the back fence line in our last home was also framed by the eastern sky. The Great Plains unfolded behind that tree, rather than the foothills of the Cascade Range. I thought of the pink-orange mornings that would climb above the late winter horizon, reaching out to light the tentative candles of the pine nestled behind the barren grey branches of Mountain Mahogany. Kyle had jackhammered a basin for the tree in the Palmer Sandstone Formation that stood only eleven inches beneath the surface. He took such care with how he placed it along the sloping contours of the yard, that the Vanderwolf grew nearly two feet in its first year. I wondered how it was doing, nine months since we left Colorado for Oregon; I hoped that I would hear Kyle’s voice again.
Pedro’s movements reminded me of the good days when Kyle was relaxed, living in the moment that we were sharing. As Pedro drove the iron rod into the sandstone he found after a foot of digging, he looked over at me with a smile. “The old guys,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, “they never want to try anything new.” I nodded knowingly. “Watch this,” he said as he found the setting he wanted on the spray nozzle. He shot some water into the hole, smirking. “The weak sandstone like this falls apart with a little bit of water.” He dropped the hose and picked up the six-foot rod and fractured the basin into big, chunky pieces. “See. Nothing to it, it just gives up,” Pedro narrated with satisfaction as I began shoveling subdued sandstone out of the basin. “Now, the old guys, they just want to beat on the rock all day or something. They won’t listen,” he said through a chuckle. “You’re going to be able to lift your arms above your head when your fifty,” I added, sharing his laugh. “You’re damn straight,” Pedro agreed.
I glanced over at the unruly Juniper that squatted next to half of the front of our house. I decided to see whether he liked me or not. “Would you help me take that mess out?” I asked. “Man, I hate those things, too. You can’t do anything to make them look good,” he said, shaking his head at the shrub. “Yeah, it’s the way the raccoons like them that bothers me the most,” I admitted, “and we have dogs.”
“Seriously, that thing’s got to go,” Pedro agreed. He looked directly at me briefly. “You’ve got my number, right?” I nodded. “Don’t call the nursery. I’ll help you on a Saturday,” he said, bending down to pick up the hose again. “You got kids?” he asked smiling.
It was that kind of Saturday arrangement that forged the friendship with Kyle. His initial visit was to plant two pine trees, including the Vanderwolf, and three Saskatoon Serviceberry shrubs into the sandstone. During that visit, he glanced at three tons of riprap that Roxanne and I had staged in our backyard. “What are you going to do with that granite?” he asked me an hour into our work.
“I’m going to build a planter for the Nanking Cherries.” I gestured to the pots sitting in the shade of the house. “We wanted a living screen because we can see over the neighbor’s fence.” We looked at that view together in silence, taking in the two-tiered lawn with a pre-fabricated block retaining wall the color of Pepto Bismol.
“Fuck,” he said quietly.
“Yeah, that makes me a little bit too aware of living in suburbia,” I agreed.
“You guys have such interesting structure to work with here,” Kyle said, “Their landscape probably wasn’t that different before that happened.”
“We really want to augment the beautiful native shrubs we have here,” I elaborated. “We want to tear out the lawn and plant other xeric, drought-tolerant, and native plants.”
“Amen,” he said, “Are you open to direction?”
“We would love it.”
“Can I come back next week and sketch something out?”
“Sounds great.”
“Do you mind if we do this as just an arrangement between you guys and me?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, we’ll do this together in my spare time. Sound like fun?”
“Absolutely.”
“I get tired of installing lawns with flower bed borders. This will be a blast. I’m a permaculturist after all.”
“A what?”
“I’ll bring a book for you to read when I come to do the sketch,” Kyle said through a Grinchlike smile. My own excitement was growing, even though I had no idea what exactly we were getting into. “For now,” Kyle said, “let me give you a preview with that granite and those Nankings.”
He immediately took to the northern slope next to the fence, cutting into the lawn. “This lawn will never have enough to drink, especially on a slope,” Kyle instructed. “Grab a hoe and copy what I am doing in the patch below me.” I struggled to keep up and mimic the way he cut a terrace into the sloping lawn. “That’s okay, but think about how that space can receive and retain water,” he counseled. “See how I’m allowing the angle of the slope to drain toward the terrace?” After twenty minutes we had a three-tiered terrace system held together by hand-set granite walls on the downhill side. He then cut shallow trenches in the remaining uphill lawn that followed the contour of the land. “This way when it rains really hard,” he said, “the swales will direct water to these new shrubs rather than just making a run for the street.”
“Swales?” I asked.
“The incisions we just made in the lawn,” Kyle said, smiling broadly. “Think of them as riverbeds just waiting for the water.” I nodded, beginning to see the holistic approach unfolding.
And unfold that holistic vision did. Drainage went from being a liability to a strength in the backyard, as Kyle ensured the torrential rains that we experienced so frequently in July and August would be directed to hydrate the landscape, “capturing,” in Kyle’s words, what precious water we were given in the high desert climate. We pruned the Elm trees to allow more light to reach the understory plants and still provide dappled shade in the afternoon. I cut most of the larger branches into eight-inch segments that became decorative borders around planting beds and bird feeders. Kyle used smaller branches as soil amendments when we planted new trees and shrubs in the yard. Natural wood mulch replaced artificially colored bark, feeding the earth as it slowly decomposed and helping the sandy soil retain water. Sagging railroad tie borders were cut and repurposed into frames for steps usually seen on a hiking trail on our yard’s southern slope.
The crown jewel of Kyle’s transformative vision was the three-tiered patio that flowed from the back sliding-glass door down the slope of the yard. The original concrete patio needed to be removed because it was draining toward the house’s foundation. But Kyle resolved to reuse the concrete. Rather than jackhammering it to pieces and hauling it away, he cut the patio with a concrete saw into tiles. I then roughed out the edges with a rock hammer to soften and naturalize the look. We used portions of the patio that could not be cut as base material. Kyle hand set the granite rock walls that held the patio together, and we tamped road base and fine pebbles, called breeze, to level the fill and ensure proper angles for drainage. The tiles were then arranged atop this base, with more breeze filling the gaps. The top tier took the shape of a circle and featured tiles arranged as a sun emerging from the horizon. The second tier was more elliptical and had tiles that formed the shape of a dragonfly, while the third tier was a planter filled with native flowers and decorative shrubs.
Permaculture, I learned from Kyle, is more of an ecological mindset than a landscaping philosophy. It is restorative, self-sustaining, and committed to rebuilding the webs of life undone by common transformation of landscapes for human habitation. In a suburban neighborhood, we typically saw at least eighteen different species of birds each day, including uncommon migrants in our part of town, like Western Tanagers and Bullock’s Orioles. We left the main trunk of a dead Elm so the White-Breasted Nuthatches and Downy Woodpeckers could browse on the teeming insect life it supported. Rabbits and Squirrels made their homes in the yard, while Deer frequently slept in cover provided by the vegetation.
At its core, permaculture should lead to ecosystems that no longer rely on active human intervention. Kyle taught me a different way of seeing and valuing the natural world, and we developed a meaningful friendship during the many hours of laboring side-by-side in the yard. One afternoon, we were moving large boulders together up the south slope of the lot when Kyle began saying, “Pole, pole” (pronounced poh-lay poh-lay).
“Huh,” I grunted through my clenched teeth, trying to turn the boulder over.
“Slowly,” he translated, “slowly.”
We paused briefly, leaning against the two-hundred-pound rock, looking at Pike’s Peak to the west. “It’s Swahili. The guys who taught me how to use a hoe in Africa would always say that at the pace they needed to coordinate their efforts. Like ‘pohhhhhh-laaaaay.’ It’s so everyone is synchronized during a task that requires cooperation.”
“Interesting,” I said. “Standing here reminds me of a Swahili proverb that says ‘mountains do not meet, but people do.’”
“Yeah,” he replied. “I heard that a couple of times when I was there.”
“Well, I never really understood it until I came to Colorado. Here the mountains do not form a bowl like back home in Oregon.”
“It’s not meant to be interpreted literally, Paul.”
“Yeah, well, I can be a little ‘pole.’”
Because of his time learning agricultural techniques in Africa, Kyle was a firm believer in doing things on what he liked to call “a human scale.” We avoided using machinery whenever possible, and the difficult labor actually drew us closer together. In a number of African cultures, there is a saying that translates roughly to mean “a person is a person through other persons,” or “I am because we are.” Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu has long espoused the philosophy known as Ubuntu, which elaborates on this foundational principle, emphasizing mutual dependence, sharing, open dialogue, and interpersonal encounter. It’s a radical form of communitarianism and interdependence. A permaculture for human interrelation.
In Ubuntu, human existence reaches fulfillment as part of a whole, which stands in stark contrast to the neurotic competition, individualism, acquisitiveness, and fearful paranoia plaguing so much of contemporary American association. Kyle’s dream for his own ten-acre property is to build a communal work cooperative, where people could live simply in community in exchange for subsistence labor. There would be vegetable gardens, fruit orchards, and small-scale animal husbandry. Any remaining produce would be sold in a store and cafeteria open to the general public. He also planned to grow container plants and trees for the nursery that his mother and uncle owned in town. Over two years, Kyle slowly shared the details of his vision and admitted the struggles he was having with the county planning board. His property, which was once bordered by other like-sized rural parcels, was quickly being surrounded by new housing developments. The planned communities that were his new neighbors did not share his alternative vision for human association. I could tell that the uphill fight with forces beyond his control was taking its toll on Kyle. Many people in our society would like to make their lives into mountains. Monoliths that stand apart from others, intimidating those beneath their soaring slopes.
I empathized with Kyle’s frustrations, especially after a new housing development broke ground about a thousand feet from our beloved backyard. Through the open arms of the Ponderosa canopy, I watched earth movers strip the land of native vegetation. The Rabbit population in our yard suddenly exploded, as the strands in the web of life collapsed under the burdens of “progress” down the ridge.
“I see it as improving land that is just sitting there useless,” the developer had said without any sense of irony in a heated neighborhood meeting. The closeness that I felt with that “useless” land opened greater distance with neighbors who shrugged the development off as inevitable. I withdrew more into myself, seeing our beautiful yard with a growing sadness–knowing how fragile any individual attempt at permaculture would be in a culture that had long left behind a sustainable human scale of desire.
Like Kyle, I had been struggling with large forces and ideas. Even within myself, the dominant view surfaces. I look out where the Juniper once hugged the house, knowing with clear eyes how I too participate in removing strands from the web of life. Lizards scattered as I removed limbs that draped the ground. I can still feel the soft contours of a bird’s nest in my cupped hands. I long to meet the world as a person among persons, but I too remain so much like a mountain.
Perhaps that is why Kyle disappeared from our life almost as quickly as he entered it. I wonder what I removed or destroyed, unknowingly collapsing a larger web. The thing that matters most, from my perspective, is that his departure left a void that cannot be repaired or replaced. Certain people, just like particular species in an ecosystem, create a ripple effect when they disappear. One of the most important tenets of Ubuntu, one emphasized by Tutu during the struggle to dismantle apartheid in South Africa, is forgiveness and reconciliation. I have prayed often, trying to understand what might have gone wrong, hoping for eventual reconciliation. Not unlike the fragile permaculture of an individual suburban plot, human relationships seem to continue to require active intervention and remedy. When I looked out on the yard we created together, something was now missing. Kyle. It wasn’t “mine,” something he received wages to help bring into being. It was a co-construction, one created in concert with the land and its diverse more-than-human community. Even though the Ponderosas, Nuthatches, Rabbits, Mountain Mahogany, Squirrels, and Flickers continued to share the space, Kyle’s absence was keenly felt.
I never really got the chance to say “goodbye” when we left Colorado for Oregon, as he had already disappeared two months before we even listed the house. We hugged that last June evening like usual before he drove home. I am not even sure if he knows we are gone. Or worse, I worry that he found out that we left because he went to the house and found someone else living there. Roxanne and I agonized about leaving Colorado in large part because of the yard that Kyle played such a vital role in creating. Most of our daily happiness came from interacting with the rich community of life just beyond the walls of our house. Friendship with Kyle was woven into those interactions, as I thought of him when the resident Towhee scoured the mulch for food or when Orioles flocked to the Currant fruit.
Yesterday a Bullock’s Oriole landed on the stand of Red Hot Pokers in the back of our new yard in Oregon. He was after the nectar. It was the first time in three decades of living in the valley that I have seen an Oriole in town. I almost called Kyle three times, phone in hand, but the thought of waiting through the rings until his voicemail hurt too much. Maybe he had lost interest in us as impulsively as he became a part of our lives. Maybe he rushed into another romantic relationship that ended badly and he feels embarrassed for dropping out on us. Maybe he had another brush with addiction. I only wish I knew, so that I could be there for my friend. If my own actions or inactions were to blame, I wanted to seek forgiveness and work toward reconciliation.
As Pedro finished shaping the soil around the newly planted Vanderwolf, I wondered if I should have gone to Kyle’s house before we left Colorado. It seemed like a step too far when he didn’t respond to messages. Then I considered the Oriole sighting from another angle. It was at that time that I tested the situation with Pedro. I didn’t want to be one of “the old guys” who “never tried anything new” and just kept beating on the rock all day long. So, I opened the door once again to another.
“You know what I struggle with?” Pedro said plainly. “Anxiety.” I gave him my full attention. “I started having these panic attacks and didn’t even know why,” he confided. “Luckily I have a really cool doctor who gave me some pills but also gave me a book and talked me through a change of mindset so I didn’t need the pills anymore.” I nodded slowly. “He helped me understand that there’s a lot that I can’t control and gave me some strategies for how to work through that.” Pedro has no idea how much his experience spoke to me in that moment, but I will tell him about Kyle some day. “Give me a call,” he said as he packed the wheelbarrow onto the trailer.