Speaking fondly of place is something that comes to me naturally and perhaps for reasons that are not always easily understood by others. This is because for most, a sense of deep connection to place is readily construed by way of a long-term experience with a native environment, a source of heritage, or the site of a chosen home or homeland.

But for the explorer, the outsider, the peregrinating student – not unlike an attentive, deliberating tourist – engaging new peoples and places provides a special opportunity to rediscover essential aspects of living in an ever-changing world, and to do so in ways that can humble and transform even the sturdiest ego. By becoming immersed in an unfamiliar setting and context, we open ourselves to insights and relations that otherwise might have never been realized.

This process is all the more telling when that certain place is rich with intention and purpose, with history and tradition, as is the case with Camp Indralaya and the theosophical orientation that forms the foundation of its soon-to-be 90 years of existence.

And so it was with a sense of adventure, curiosity, and due diligence that I accepted the invitation to serve as guest gardener for the 2016 program season.

Buoyed by my first interactions with co-directors Leonie and Minor, I was pleased that I had decided to arrive on Orcas Island three days before the camp's early April weekend work party. For I used the free time to acquaint myself with the buildings and grounds, with the woodlands and shoreline, often while meandering in a state of ample solitude. On one afternoon, I wandered off on a pressing hunch that the time was ripe for hunting wild fungi and I quickly found some excellent morels. 

As for the garden, it was indeed a large project in waiting, but no larger than anything I had imagined since I wisely came with no explicit hopes or expectations. Except for some plots of overwintering kale and oats, the many rows of raised beds were unkempt and recently unattended; the greenhouse and tool sheds not yet fully stirred from hibernation; the irrigation threads in need of some repair. The responsibilities would surely be many, but everything gleaned from my first impression inspired a promising vision of what might transpire over the weeks ahead.

So did the bubbly enthusiasm - and jittery concerns – conveyed by Leonie as we toured the garden together, exchanging a flurry of information, this only weeks before she and Minor would begin a four-month leave of absence. If the conversation was light and friendly, the defining gist was perfectly clear: the garden is the heart of Indralaya. I could ask for no better mantra or compass to guide me on my journey.

Come the arrival of work party guests, I was further encouraged by how easily participants reconvened with old friends and how generously they received me, the newcomer, who was here to oversee the beloved and time-honored garden. Fortunately, I had already prepped some beds for planting, and thanks to Leonie's efforts, the greenhouse tables were packed tight with trays of new starts.

Oodles and oodles of new starts.

That said, I cannot say enough about how fluidly volunteers took to the sheer enjoyment of varied tasks during that initial planting. By the end of the weekend, three beds of lettuce and two of bush peas were in the ground and leading the way toward a productive spring season. Subsequently, and in spite of the many long hours I spent alone with garden fork, hoe and wheelbarrow, the weeks that followed were punctuated by an ever-increasing number of chances to do good work and establish new relationships. As summer progressed, fences were mended, compost was turned, and whole corner sections of tangled overgrowth were cleared and covered with wood chips. And to think that so many people agree that weeding can be a meditative exercise!

As one might expect, there were many lessons to be learned, not a few of which went well beyond the pale of horticulture. My favorite among the pearls of wisdom gained – as first shared with Minor some many weeks later – is that every plant comes with a dozen opinions.

This might at first seem like sarcastic commentary on the vagaries of human nature and egoism, but to the contrary, it attests to the many new sources of information that are made available by sharing the experience. It reminded me that the power of place is as complex as life itself, contingent on so many past and present factors, on so many different perspectives, personal and collective, inside the garden and extending far beyond.

It also confirmed a practical need to maintain focus and cultivate a constructive style of diplomacy. For while the garden was a peaceful refuge in so many ways for so many people, it was also an integral part of all that was happening outside its gates: the ever busy kitchen staff, the culinary designs of the head cooks, the successive changes in camp program, the comings and goings of program participants.

To address this challenge, I did my best not to become a mediator of individual needs and wishes. Instead I dreamed up a medicine wheel, a dynamic circle of signification, that embraced the garden's role in four confluent parts: food, beauty, collaboration, healing. Whenever possible, I guided affairs through one or more of those mediums. This construct served me well, as long as one always kept in mind the simple fact that life will defy the best of constructs. Temperamental water systems, a sudden and mysterious blight, critters who go chomp, chomp in the night. Best hoe and plant and keep on smiling. Alas, we are never completely in control.

Most poignant for me however were the many long, slow stories that I watched evolve in the garden over time, stories so long and slow and rich in detail that they are not succinctly imparted. Stories that revisit a heroic tomato journey; a fanciful bush pea forest; the promising rise and sad decline of the potato towers. Of ushering slugs and snails to the forest. Of sharing the air space with swallows and grosbeaks.

But above all others, I savor the memory of one Friday in particular. It was during one of those down times when no program was in session, when all my staff colleagues had retired from their daily routines. April had been unusually sunny and warm, and the forecast called for trending toward much preferred cooler, cloudy May weather. I had already prepped a bed for cabbage, and inside the greenhouse a tray of leggy starts were looking forlorn and begging for attention. Wasting no time after finishing dinner, I gathered my gumption and set myself down in the lingering light of early evening, methodically soaking bound roots free from their potting soil, then slowly planting, to the brink of nightfall, five long rows of green and savoy varieties. If another human being was stirring nearby, I never took notice.

Next morning, come daybreak, the skies were overcast, the air damp and quickened, and every one of those newly planted cabbage starts was standing firm and tall, without so much as a wilt or whimper, as so they would right through to maturity. This episode prompted the image of John Abbenhouse, legendary Indralaya gardener, sowing seeds through the dark of night and in harmony with the moon and stars. That moment, that image, for someone so new to the garden like me, was something of a rite of passage, modest for sure, but all the same, a small invocation of the many helping hands that had worked Indralaya's soil before me.

In sum, it was a very good year, not least of all for bush beans and basil, carrots and lettuce, beets and arugula, figs and strawberry. I cannot do justice by naming the names of all the good folk who lent a hand, for the list is so long and unwieldy that trying to do so would only diminish each individual contribution. But I can hope that aside from the bounty, every one of my collaborators took away some long, slow story that has not yet been fully processed or adequately imparted, a story that someday will find fresh presence in a yet to be here and now. For we were there and then together, good guests at the heart of Indralaya, much as we all are guests in a journey we too often dare to call our own.

Lloyd Vivola

Chief Gardener

January 10, 2017

In Cascadia