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♪ Down in some lone valley, ♪
♪ In a far distant place, ♪
♪ Where the wild birds do whistle, ♪
♪ Their notes do increase ♪
♪ I'm going to some far land, ♪
♪ My fortune to know, ♪
♪ That I'll dream of pretty Saro ♪
♪ Wherever I'll go ♪
♪ Yes, I wish I was a poet ♪
♪ And could write some fine hand ♪
♪ I'd write my love a letter ♪
♪ That she'd understand ♪
♪ I'd write it by the river ♪
♪ Where the waters o'erflow, ♪
♪ That I'll dream of pretty Saro ♪
♪ Wherever I go ♪
♪ And I wish I was a sparrow, ♪
♪ Had wings, and could fly ♪
♪ Straight to my love's window ♪
♪ This night I draw nigh, ♪
♪ All night in the arms ♪
♪ Of my true love I'd lay, ♪
♪ And watch those little windows ♪
♪ 'Till the dawning of day ♪
Buddy, Buddy, Buddy, Buddy.
Come on a walk, Buddy?
This plant has been here
probably as long as this house has been here.
35 years or so.
This is probably the rarest plant in my garden,
which I'm trying very hard to keep alive.
I've got three or four in here.
There's one there.
It's a kind of ginseng.
Uh, I don't know of anywhere else in the country
where you can see this plant.
So, this is a major, major adaptogen,
and the word adaptogen was coined to describe this plant.
So, the Russians are doing a whole lot of research
on these health-promoting plants,
and their goal was to win more gold medals at the Olympics,
which they did.
Now, the leaves of this are not all that different
from the leaves of this,
but this one is the plant
that killed Abraham Lincoln's mother.
Its name will be tarnished throughout history for that.
Lobelia inflata.
It's because of these inflated seed pods.
They look like little balloons.
So, this is an emetic.
So, if you wanted to make yourself puke, this would help.
There was this guy, Samuel Thomson,
and he was the first person in America to advocate
for herbal medicine.
So just for a joke,
he gives this working man tea made from this.
He says, "Try th--" The guy's feeling kind of puny.
"Try this."
Well, the guy goes and pukes his guck out-- guts out,
and then he comes back an hour later,
and he says, "I feel better than I have in months."
And this big lightbulb goes on, on Samuel Thomson's head.
And his theme was, "every man his own doctor."
But every plant tells a story.
How old is Buddy?
Uh, I keep trying to remember.
But six or seven, maybe, by now.
Time flies, you know.
Like, I-- I keep saying things were five years ago,
and then at some point I realize,
"Oh, I better jack that up to ten."
So, can you start by just telling us the history
of the idea of a paradise garden,
and your landing here?
Uh, yeah.
So, hello, everyone.
Thank you for visiting.
My name is Joe Hollis.
I'm sitting on the porch of my house at Mountain Gardens,
my property.
It's in Yancey County.
It's at the foot of the highest mountains
in eastern North America, actually.
2.8 acres of land, which I purchased in 1972,
right up against the National Forest.
Basically, I wanted to do something with my life
that would address the current kind of disastrous situation,
as I see it, of human life on Earth,
or, at least, Western human life on Earth.
It's like we are no longer occupying a niche
vis-à-vis, uh, Gaia,
that functions either for us or for Gaia.
I think it all really comes down to values at the base.
Like, values is the rudder that steers the whole
giant ship that's out there.
It's like, what do we really want out of life?
So I think a-- a lot of our problem,
as-- as far as our niche goes,
has to do with our value system.
Over the years, we've gotten more and more into this position
where we're just unabashedly materialistic,
and we just want more stuff,
and the more stuff we can get,
the more successful our life has been.
So I knew I was gonna spend my life just doing
one particular experiment, you might say,
of how to live on Earth.
So, the concept I came up with,
uh, I call paradise gardening,
and I have various little ways to define that.
Uh, one would be a way of life that, uh,
is best for Gaia, best for our species,
and best for the individual.
That would be a simple definition.
Another really easy definition
would be the garden where everything you need
is there for the taking.
So, the goal all along has been to become
a hunter-gatherer in my own garden,
and to have my garden be full enough of the things I need
to gather to-- to supply my needs,
and the needs of, maybe,
a half a dozen other people living here.
The idea all along has been
to have this be not a one-man operation,
but a-- a small community,
like an eco-village,
and that is still the intention,
uh, and I'm not gonna be around for a whole lot longer,
so I'm rather urgently looking for the people
that are gonna inherit this place, and take it over.
So, making a formula,
which is gonna be pressed,
and then it's gonna be a tincture
that, uh, we sell over there or in one of these.
And, um...
so it's kinda just like following a recipe.
This is all pretty new to me this year.
So I've been here since probably like the second week in March,
so, in total, almost a year.
I was kind of interested in herbalism,
but, um, I wasn't really ready to commit to the--
the cost of going to a school like that.
And once-- once I saw Mountain Gardens,
I was like, that's kinda what I'm looking for,
is, like, this full-immersion horticultural,
like, apprenticeship.
But, man, like, working under Joe is awesome,
because he just knows everything here.
And so you can, like, point at something,
and he'll know the Latin name,
the common name, the medicinal value,
where it came from.
Like, I feel like a wizard is, like, not--
I don't know, maybe it's not the best way to describe him,
but he's like a plant wizard.
Don't get me started about mushrooms.
They are it.
I've been doing this for years.
And I'm from Chicago,
and there's a big mushroom grower there
that used to throw away a dumpster's worth
of this stuff every day.
And I was on the Community Gardener's Resource Committee,
so I would collect all these blocks, and distribute 'em
to different gardeners.
And then I used to teach a class on how to do this,
how to take care of 'em, how to grow 'em.
I'm really very specifically interested in the learning,
and sharing, and developing a community
and a culture of people that all know how to do this stuff.
Um, and that aligns perfectly with, like,
what Joe's vision for this place has always been,
a place that is an education center for this kind of living.
The first year I came here, what year was that, Emma?
- 2021? - 2021.
Yeah, Emma and I both arrived the first summer of 2021.
Um...
And, uh, that was before the fire.
And the library was here.
And the books were here.
And Joe's energy levels were still really intact.
And that was the plan, is that 2022
was gonna be building, building, building,
building, building and infrastructure.
And then in March, the fire happened,
and just caused a huge reset in the place.
It was gonna be the 50th anniversary
of Mountain Gardens, big celebratory year.
Also my 80th birthday.
This guy was here helping me.
And I really kinda thought that he was the guy
I've been waiting for, or one of them,
to take over after me.
And he had a little bit of a drinking problem,
I have to say, and I've run into that before.
Uh...
And in any case, he made a fire.
And he did not put it out when he went to bed.
And at five in the morning, the whole place was, uh,
in flames.
The entire thing burned down.
The pavilion, the library, the tool shop,
the photovoltaic system,
the greenhouse here caught,
it was such a big fire, the greenhouse caught on fire.
All these trees behind us and ar-- around
all caught on fire.
The nursery operation, which was below this deck,
all that gone, all the fertilizer,
all the flats, all the pots,
all the-- all the everything.
It was...
quite shattering, needless to say.
So... yeah,
I've never really recovered from that,
and I never really will.
I think I'm suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome,
and my health has really been bad ever since then.
Hypertension, and God knows what all.
Uh...
You know, it was hard to do anything with all this rubble,
because it was just all full of broken glass.
So a lot of it got pushed back there,
and then, burned books.
I mean, we had this huge, uh, hoop of burned books
that-- that I was gonna try and grow mushrooms on.
But they ended up kind of just being incorporated
into this mound back here.
Yeah, crazy stuff.
Crazy stuff, I would not wish anybody ever
to have to deal with that kind of thing.
The way I had it before this fire was,
it was kind of the peak, as far as my library,
you know, it was really first-rate.
I mean, I can't quite imagine a better library
for the purposes that I wanted,
which was to buttress the argument I'm trying to make
about how we should be living on Earth,
and just all this supportive material, right?
There's really no hope of ever, uh, reassembling what was there.
Not in my lifetime.
That was 50 years of--
of accumulating, and reading, you know.
And-- but the idea, uh, is really just to try
and put it back as close as possible.
That's my Dawn Redwood out there.
Looks like it's kind of, uh, plateauing out up there.
That's interesting.
I'm usually reading, uh,
ten or a dozen things at the same time.
Just kinda switching from one to another
according to my interest of-- of the day, of the moment.
Just trying to pin down how we should be living on Earth.
What does it mean to be a good human being?
Well, pretty much of a disaster, you know?
We're destroying the planet,
and half the population's addicted to drugs.
Everybody's, like, stressed out like crazy.
And, uh...
It seems like we're constantly on the brink
of some kind of world war,
and the weapons get more and more intense.
And, yeah, it's a total disaster the whole way ar-- around.
And it seems like there's a widespread feeling
that, uh, there's some kind of huge crash coming.
Of course, people have been saying that
for thousands of years, so it remains to be seen.
But...
I don't know, certainly just in terms of the way
the climate's changing,
that seems pretty unavoidable.
It's mostly just thinking about resilience,
and then thinking about what might follow in the future.
Like, if there is some kind of huge crash,
then what might be rebuilt, you know?
I took a lot of my inspiration from Taoist philosophy,
which I've ascribed to ever since I was in high school.
The kind of fundamental idea of Taoism
is that the Tao, which is the way the world works,
the way the universe works, the way everything works,
the Tao is-- is there doing what the Tao does,
and the goal of human life is to fit ourselves in,
because the idea is that we can gather energy
from our surroundings,
that energy being called qi.
Qi is what circulates in the meridians of your body.
Qi is, like, behind everything that happens, really.
Often translated as energy, but not quite accurately.
But the idea was, with this garden,
was very much the same as the idea of human health,
which is to balance everything.
So you want to balance out the seasons,
you want to balance out the directions,
you want a balance of sun and shade,
you want a balance of moist and dry.
These are all yin-yang axes.
So the idea is to try and balance those all out,
and that's gonna be your perfect qi,
just like in your body.
These Taoist practitioners, what they really wanted to do
was get as deep into the wilderness as they could,
because that's where there was perfect qi, you know?
And the closer you come to civilization,
the more that qi kind of gets diluted.
- Hi. - How are you?
How you doing? You okay?
- Hmm? - Are you okay?
Huh?
- No. - No?
You look a little anxious today.
It's been quite a while since I've been okay.
Yeah.
Nothing new.
Come on in.
Yeah, I keep getting this sense from your pulse
that there's-- some-- something's just stuck
- right here. - Hmm.
- And it's-- it's putting too-- - That's what it is, yeah.
It's like-- it feels like it's between my navel
and my, uh, whatever you call this.
- Breastbone, yeah. - Yeah.
- More focused in there.
Yeah, and then it feels like it's getting stuck up here.
Hmm.
Are you having any shortness of breath, or...
Um, I'm not noticing that specifically,
but then I'm not doing a great deal of...
Um...
- Breath-shortening activity? - Yeah, exactly.
It makes me wonder if the organ itself
is suffering in some way.
Is it still warm?
No, it's good, it's not too hot.
Okay, good.
Just warm, just nice.
Joe, since you have a scar here on your abdomen, these
- might feel a little sharp. - Hmm.
But you just let me know.
Yeah, there's somebody there.
Yeah, you've got a live-- a live point there.
Somebody there. Mm-hmm.
We're definitely going in the right direction,
according to your pulses.
What are you noticing? A little--
- This little-- This little-- - No, no.
I'm not really noticing anything much right this minute.
Okay.
Everything feels okay.
Okay.
I'm gonna let you have a snooze.
You have 13 old messages.
Uh, we were just calling. We saw your video on YouTube.
Um, we saw that you were asking for people to come live with you
and help work on the farm, and work on the place.
Uh, we would love to do that.
- Well. - Hello, friends.
Uh, my name is Phillip, and I was just curious
about, uh, what it would take to come down there
for a couple of days, and help you guys work.
Uh, I just-- I-- I just, uh-- Probably like a lot of people,
I was just made aware of you guys from the recent
YouTube video that just, uh, that just went up.
We just need to know if we're gonna be able
to-- to bring our daughter.
Um, that-- that's the one--
that was the one thing that we wanted to know.
One-- One question, "Can we bring our daughter?"
Um, please give me a call back.
Uh, 308...
Not where-- not what do you do with your poop?
Voice message from telephone number...
So, like, a month and a half ago,
a YouTuber came by to make a video about Joe.
This happens all the time.
People contact Joe and want to make a video with him
or do a photoshoot with him,
and he always says yes, because he's always just wanted
his message out to more people.
Um, we had no idea who the guy was.
It's on us, right?
Um, it's this guy, Peter Santenello.
If you go on YouTube,
and go to the search box and type "Peter",
just "Peter", he's the first thing that comes up.
He's huge.
About two weeks ago now,
the video launched,
and by this point it's got seven million views
or something like that.
Every single day the phone is ringing off the hook.
We've got hundreds of emails from people
that want to move here or volunteer here,
or just come meet Joe.
But we have had people arriving with their families,
and their kids, and their grandparents,
expecting to, like, have houses and places to stay.
We've also had people who come,
and just aren't prepared to poop in a bucket,
and decide they can't-- you know, this isn't for them.
Like, I was reading emails,
or actually listening to voicemails today,
and one of the guys-- one of the guys wants to come
if there's a hot shower.
I bathe in the creek.
It's been very, uh, interesting just to see
the, uh, quantity of responses,
and, you know, how many people are so desperate
to live like this.
It's really kind of a...
I mean, I guess I probably could have guessed that,
but to just see it...
...is, uh,
is, uh, kind of an eye-opener,
and it makes me think a lot about where we want to go
in the future, as far as, uh, trying to respond to that.
You know, that-- that it's not really that we need
to get out there and convince people
that there's a better way to live,
uh, because plenty of them are already convinced.
Uh, I had been in the Peace Corps,
spent three years in Borneo
with, uh, Native Peoples, tribal society.
And it was all very fascinating and life-changing.
In particular, uh, coming from an urban, uh,
kind of environment,
I was very impressed to see people who pretty much
ran their own lives.
They built their houses, they grew their food,
they-- you know, they had not too much communication
with the outside world.
What I had realized was that these people were probably
healthier and happier than anybody I knew in America,
with this, uh, totally almost opposite lifestyle
to what we lead here.
And history, what we call history,
is only a couple thousand years old,
since the beginning of writing.
Well, we were here for a million years before that,
doing stuff on this planet.
The Bible says that Eden was a garden,
and humans were put in there to dress it, and keep it.
I don't get a lot of my ideas out of the Bible,
but that's, I think, a very succinct expression
of a human niche, of a successful human niche.
It's too bad the Bible then says we got kicked out.
Because we didn't, we just left voluntarily,
and we could go back in if we want to.
We're here at my yurt,
where I've lived for...
almost three and a half years,
and it was the first, like, permanent structure we built.
Before that, I was just living
a full spring and summer just out of a tent.
I've known Joe for almost a decade.
He wasn't the quickest friend I ever made,
but he's one of the, like,
most amazing friends I've ever had.
And very much the process of becoming his friend
were totally and specifically inspirational to this.
I think he really wanted to fuel that commitment in me
that he felt 50 years ago,
and wanted to support and nurture that as a part
of, like, that's what he does,
and that's what he's always wanted to see.
Gardens are pretty quiet.
I just cover-cropped everything,
and I've been turning the goat loose in there
to just root around, and crap everywhere.
So we have a pretty diverse medicine garden
that's back over here,
that we're sorta doubling up for next year.
And there we're growing, like,
a pretty wide variety of mostly garden medicinals.
And then there are a lot of, like, staple foods
that are very easy to grow, and kind of, like,
give you the most bang for your buck.
And this will be where we have, like, classes.
It's gonna be our apothecary where we do a lot of our, like,
plant medicine making, and things like that.
Like, we're not gonna be total hermits our whole lives.
Like, we're gonna have classes out here,
and do some workshops,
and some events, and things like that.
And we wanted some public-facing infrastructure
that, um, is akin, again,
to how Mountain Gardens is set up.
This is gonna be a library.
An old-school, Mountain Garden-style library.
This is what we were working on right when the fire happened.
We took a lot of the time and a lot of the resources
that were going into the build here
and diverted them in Joe's direction
for the last year and a half.
Until I saw what that meant when somebody spends, like,
decades accumulating everything that there is to know
about some particular,
very interesting topics, like bats.
Mind-bending.
And something I really wanted for myself ever since then.
So, another tick of inspiration
from Joe Hollis, and his life's work.
Gotta have a library.
Okay.
What's up?
I have some very significant news about my health.
The news is that I have stage four cancer.
CT scan done today shows a definite malignant mass
at the head of the pancreas, with a resulting blockage
of the pancreatic duct, bile duct,
SMA, whatever that means.
He has evidence of metastatic lesions to the liver
and lymph nodes, so it's spreading around.
This is just my, uh, general practitioner,
who said that I might have three months.
Oh, shit.
But on the whole, I'm pretty poorly disposed
towards doing anything that's gonna diminish
my quality of life, which I think chemo does do.
Uh, my entire concern is the future of Mountain Garden
much more than my--
Than your personal, okay.
That is my happiness.
- And there's-- - Yeah.
There's not a distinction between the two.
And, um, and it's just been huge for me
that Ryan has agreed to stick around.
I've been watching him decline in health for a while,
and I had a feeling that there was something big going on.
Um...
So when he told me the-- the prognosis,
um, well, I mean, I was instantly saddened,
and I, like, put my hand on his leg,
and then I, like, gave him a hug,
and got really overwhelmed and sad,
but he, like, didn't-- he wasn't--
that's not what he was up for, truthfully.
He was like, it's okay, it's okay.
Like, it's all right, I'm good.
When he asked me to stick around and shepherd it forward,
I was overwhelmed, humbled.
Uh...
Yeah, I was totally taken aback.
Um, so...
I think it's a big responsibility,
and a beautiful project,
um, and I think the right people are gonna show up,
and it's gonna be able to be what he wants it to be.
All right, I just want to show you guys some weeding
right here around my house,
because there's a lot of good stuff in this area.
All right, I don't know how much you all are gonna remember,
but try and remember as much as you can.
This is the Shortia,
oconee bells.
An extremely rare and desirable wildflower
that we want to keep.
We want to get rid of all this stuff.
That looks like a little currant or gooseberry.
We want that.
This is all more ajuga that we don't want.
And we don't want goldenrod.
Uh, and then it gets back into that Schisandra stuff.
It'd be nice to get a bunch of this Spikenard fruit,
and do something with it.
They're-- they're quite delicious.
- Have you eaten any? - No.
Well, they're not bad.
Okay.
Oh, wow. It's nice.
That looks like a really nice little fern there.
It's got a tag.
So we're going to start making our own tags pretty soon.
We've got the 75 that that guy made for us,
but it's by no means everything in the garden.
Echinacea pallida.
They're better than the other Echinacea, medicinally.
We're good to get done.
And that's the end of this walk. I've gotta go lay down.
Okay.
So I read through your case a little bit,
and, uh, you know, learned about what's going on.
So I'd love to hear, in your words,
just kind of how things started.
And it seems like it's happened pretty rapidly,
in terms of a diagnosis.
As far as the cancer goes,
so, I started having stomach pain about a month ago.
Eventually they said, "You need to get a CT scan."
And that was, I think, about a week or ten days ago.
And that's when this was discovered.
- Mm-hmm. - Anyway,
now it's progressed enough, Now I'm on hospice.
I've got some morphine, uh...
that I can take,
and then I can supplement that, apparently, with this oxycodone.
I've had a--
I've not been able to sleep through the night.
I wake up at-- in the-- at three a.m. or so,
from the pain, usually.
There's issues about constipation,
which I never had before in my life.
And lots of, uh, issues around heartburn,
which I also never had before in my life.
Everything's new.
I've never had any of these problems,
or anything ro-- remotely resembling these problems.
Let me ask you this.
It sounds like they decided not to do any therapy for you,
and instead just put you in hospice.
Was there a thought that they didn't think
you would have any benefit?
At this point, I'm not really worried about
or thinking that it's going to ever be cured.
I'm just looking for a little more time,
because I'm desperately trying to, uh, turn my place here
into a kind of an eco-village,
and I've got to recruit the right people for it.
It's going to take about six people to carry on my work here.
To carry out your work there.
Uh, So I'm just looking for a little extra time,
but I don't want-- the-- the chemo's just gonna--
It might give me extra time,
but I'll be functioning even more poorly,
so I won't be able to take advantage of that time.
♪ Oh, Death ♪
♪ Won't you spare me ♪
♪ Over another year ♪
♪ Well, what is this ♪
♪ That I can't see ♪
♪ With ice-cold hands ♪
♪ Taking hold on me ♪
♪ Well, I am Death ♪
♪ None can excel ♪
♪ I'll open the door ♪
♪ To heaven or hell ♪
♪ Oh, Death ♪
♪ Someone would pray ♪
♪ Please don't take me 'til another day ♪
♪ The children pray ♪
♪ The preacher preached ♪
♪ Time and mercy is out of your reach ♪
♪ In death I've come ♪
♪ To take the soul ♪
♪ To leave the body ♪
♪ And leave it cold ♪
♪ To drop the flesh Off of the frame ♪
♪ The earth and worms ♪
♪ Both have claim ♪
♪ My wealth is all at your command ♪
♪ If you'll remove your icy hand ♪
♪ Now, Death, oh, Death ♪
♪ Please consider my age ♪
♪ Please don't take me at this stage ♪
♪ Oh, the young ♪
♪ The rich, the poor ♪
♪ They're all alike to me, you know ♪
♪ Oh, Death ♪
♪ Oh, oh, Death ♪
♪ Won't you spare me over ♪
♪ Another year ♪
♪ Won't you spare me over ♪
♪ Another year ♪
♪ Won't you spare me over ♪
♪ 'Til another year ♪
These were teeny-tiny trees,
every single one of these.
Pretty amazing how they've grown up.
I really think that Joe should be buried up here,
because this is where it started.
40 years ago, 1983,
uh, my life in New England was falling apart,
and I decided to follow the ridgetop
of the Appalachian Mountains,
and see where I landed.
Coming all the way from New Hampshire,
and I had a dog, a little black dog.
And I thought I was like Dorothy,
following the yellow brick road, and looking for a home.
And I pull the truck up,
and out of the cabin comes the wizard.
He came out.
Joe had, like, more hair, and it was, like, out.
And he just came, and hunched.
He was always hunched over,
because he's always looking at plants.
And he looked up, and I just laughed.
I said, "You're the wizard."
"Hi, I'm Dorothy."
I just loved it.
It felt like, you know, paradise.
So, Joe said I could live in the yurt
if I worked in the garden,
and then I started to build the house.
And I was pregnant.
When I became pregnant is when I married Joe,
and then we were married for ten years.
My only regrets is that when I left, I just left.
And Joe was angry that I left,
and we hadn't talked in 25 years.
So, that's a long time.
So I regret that.
And it's sad that tragedy has to bring us together again,
but...
that's--
that's life.
We all have these chapters that make up a book,
and Joe is quite the character of those chapters.
It's pretty amazing what he's done.
There's a ton of blue cohosh right there.
Oh, yeah. Do you wanna grab it?
- Yeah, do you have a bag? - Yeah, here.
So there's a fair amount of ginseng up here.
I've been trying to protect it for 20 or 30 years.
So do you have any memories of collecting ginseng
in your youth?
Yeah, I mean, all sorts of things.
Just wild crafting.
I'm not sure I have a strong gauge on what normal
kid things are, but I would say
traipsing around the woods
was definitely a huge part of growing up.
Part of my dad's legacy is the work here,
and then the other part is...
influencing, uh, how people perceive the world.
It has definitely affected how I perceive it.
I read to Jeffrey at night,
and it was a large variety of stuff.
I'm curious which things you remember.
Yeah. Oh, gosh.
I mean, it was always a billion things
that were, um,
beyond my level at the time.
Um...
Because I was trying to elevate.
Right, yes, well, you did a good job.
And then there was a certain amount of just singing.
I still, I will just...
be sitting outside somewhere,
and getting eaten up by mosquitoes,
and start singing "Black Flies" to myself.
Because you sang--
- ♪ The little black flies ♪ - Yeah.
♪ Always the black flies no matter where you go ♪
♪ Die with the black flies picking your bones ♪
- Yeah. - ♪ In North Ontario, ♪
♪ In North Ontario ♪
As far as memories,
it's just all the celebrations up here.
Pretty well-known.
We had the hot tub going, and there'd be a drum circle,
and there'd just be people wandering around in the garden.
Totally regret that I never kept a guestbook,
or even a list of all the apprentices that were here,
by year, by year, and all the visitors.
I mean, it would be terrific.
It would be a great book.
But it never happened.
It's all just in people's memory banks.
Hmm.
Yeah, one more time!
Okay.
We're kind of at a culminating moment
of two years of work.
Two Marches ago was when this fire occurred
that really took out the jeweled--
cen-- the crown jewel of the entirety
of Mountain Gardens, the library, apothecary,
kitchen, gathering space,
common area, classroom,
all-purpose centerpiece to the whole property.
So this amazing crew of ten professionals
has showed up today to really just see this through
to a clean and succinct ending,
so that Joe has his library back.
Mountain Gardens has its real center of gravity returned.
And I don't know, like,
primarily it's just, like, I saw--
I've seen Joe for all of five minutes this morning,
but I saw, like, the look on his face
when he saw what we all see,
that this is gonna be done today.
You know, after seeing you, Kevin, it's pioneer Kevin.
- Right on. For the most part. - Thank you, everyone.
- Hey, Joe. Thank you. - Yeah, I appreciate it.
Thank you.
This is like a dream.
- Now. - My pleasure.
We're gonna have a Zoom call?
We're gonna have a Zoom call with Lee.
No, it's not.
- No, it's not. - It's Caroline.
- Hello? Is this Joe?
Yes, it is.
How can I be of support to you?
I've got, uh, maybe a month to live,
maybe not quite.
So I'm--
Um, I'm working with a book called, Preparing to Die.
This one is very much following the Tibetan tradition.
Do you have familiarity
with Tibetan Buddhism?
No, I do not.
So I'm in deep water.
I'm just trying to work my way through it.
When we no longer--
when consciousness and karma, that is what is gonna travel.
- Right. - When that no longer
is of body, it can be very confusing.
Yes, I gather.
Yes, and you might be experiencing
some of that confusion now,
as the elements are dissolving in your body.
Yeah, I find myself getting weaker every day.
What the-- the Tibetan Book of the Dead
is telling us is that if we are, um,
experiencing anything other than loving kindness
and compassion,
it's a projection of the mind, the mind that is traveling.
Okay, so any time from now until the time
you take your last gross breath,
any time that you're fearful or angry or irritated,
if your mind allows,
you'll recognize that it's a projection.
As soon as you recognize that it is a projection,
you're liberated from it.
- Yes, that's very good. - Okay?
And-- but in truth, I'm not having any such feelings.
- Okay, good. - I've-- I have a terrific
- support group. - Good.
And we're having a lot, we're really enjoying--
I've-- the last week or so has been some of the best days
of my life since Covid.
Oh, that's wonderful.
Yeah, so I'm really good on that front.
How are you experiencing it?
I've been saying for several years to people
that I'm ready to die.
That my quality of life has deteriorated very badly.
- And-- - Uh-huh.
And the news, global, poli-- national,
w-- ecological, whatever,
all the news is exceedingly gloomy,
with no signs that anything's gonna get any better.
So, yeah, I'd be just as happy to leave, to not come back.
Right.
But I'd be torn, because I love the planet so much, you know.
- I know. I know. - It's so beautiful.
Hard to tear yourself away from all this beauty.
Apparently, you're gonna get the total, uh, clearance.
So, this is Peace Corps training in Hawaii.
Uh, we were there for three months.
That looks like Mount Kinabalu.
That was up in Sabah.
I went there for a vacation one time.
It's the highest mountain for, like, a million miles
- in every direction. - Oh, wow.
It just sticks up in the middle of Borneo.
Just wait for this mountain explorer photo coming up.
Pardon me?
Oh, you'll see.
- Wow. - Yeah.
That's awesome, huh?
And me, and our guide.
Oh, this guy's a Punan.
So, they're totally nomadic.
They live out in the woods.
They're almost extinct.
Lots of effort's been made to save them.
They're very...
out with blowpipes, and do all interesting things.
So, uh, they don't have clocks or watches or calendars.
And I don't know what that's about.
That is not Malay architecture.
I believe that said Bangkok.
Yeah, it sure looks like Bangkok.
But I don't even remember going to Bangkok.
- Nobody does. - Yeah.
Nobody remembers goin' to Bangkok.
So, this is a church there.
- Wow. - The Catholic Church,
the, uh, bishop there,
was a huge supporter of the arts.
And he hired the very best artists.
But that's their art style.
And it shows up in everything.
That beadwork in my house, my tattoos.
Amazing.
That's everything.
- That's it? - That's it.
All right.
Thank you, thank you.
- Oh. Yeah. - That was great.
Yeah, that's really cool.
Oh, I have some really great news tonight.
So, that whole river was going to be flooded.
Every one of those villages would have been gone.
Uh, it's this international scheme that goes on with dams.
And here, too.
And it's happening all over the world.
And it's always the most primitive examples
who really will table it.
Who get it.
It's been going on for, like, 20 years.
- Wow. - All these primitive
people are standing, trying to do roadblocks.
- You know? - Wow.
And it's lost, they've now lost it.
And meanwhile, they're logging away.
And so there's this huge timber company
called Samling International.
And they're the ones that are chopping everything down.
And, uh, Save Our Rivers is really fighting back.
And I got an email this morning that they won the suit.
Yeah.
- Wow. - Yeah!
- So great. - That's awesome.
Yeah, I mean, that'll change everything.
Only 'cause if one place can do it.
- Yeah. - You know?
But it'll get a lot of international attention.
It'll be in The New York Times, that court case.
Hmm, wow.
There was reporters from all over the world.
It breaks me up.
- Aww! - I'm just very, very happy.
- That's good. - Yeah.
♪ I love my love ♪
♪ And, well, he knows ♪
♪ I love the ground ♪
♪ Whereon he goes ♪
♪ If you know more ♪
♪ On Earth I see ♪
♪ I can't serve you ♪
♪ As you have me ♪
♪ But still I hope ♪
♪ The day will come ♪
♪ When you and I ♪
♪ Shall be as one ♪
♪ I go to the Clyde ♪
♪ For to mourn and weep ♪
♪ So dissatisfied ♪
♪ I never could sleep ♪
♪ I'll write for you ♪
♪ A few short lines ♪
♪ And I'd suffer death ♪
♪ Ten thousand times ♪
♪ So fare thee well ♪
♪ My own true love ♪
♪ Our time has passed ♪
♪ And I wish you well ♪
♪ But still I hope ♪
♪ The day will come ♪
♪ When you and I ♪
♪ Shall be as one ♪
♪ I love my love ♪
♪ And well, he knows ♪
♪ I love the ground ♪
♪ Whereon he goes ♪
♪ With the prettiest face ♪
♪ And the neatest hands ♪
♪ I love the ground ♪
♪ Whereon he stands ♪
Digging a grave is just this...
expression of care that I've never really had
the opportunity to put out into the world,
or towards someone I cared about like that.
At this moment, it's just so clear to me
how entangled my personal world is with Joe's existence.
I know he's always wanted to make things seem
accessible to people,
see this place as an example of something
that they could take into their own paradigm
or life goals or whatever they want,
but I don't think he knows how much that means
to give someone a better sense of their own belonging.
Like, that's as much as a person can offer another person.
It's sad.
I've cried so much in the last two months,
more than I have in the last two years,
and, uh...
I am going to miss him so much.
So much gratitude though, like...
...yeah, just, like,
an un-- unfathomable amount of gratitude.
Getting to watch someone receive visitors,
and spend lovely time,
and have final conversations,
um, getting to witness that,
uh, it's pretty beautiful.
Getting to actually say goodbye is pretty beautiful,
while someone's still here.
I love the idea that I keep hearing
in every sort of version of what happens after,
about there being a bright light.
For-- like, it's Poltergeist taught me that.
Like, "Go to the light, go to the light."
But I don't know what happens after.
Um, I like to see how content he is
about his place, and that it's coming,
and that he's ready for it.
Such a beautiful fall.
To be buried in the fall, it-- it seems perfect.
You know, the leaves fall,
and then you can fall into the ground.
I mean, we-- we're only here for a short period of time
in the scheme of things,
you know, so we might as well
make the best of the time that we have.
And-- and I think what's happened here
at Mountain Gardens is-- is kind of remarkable.
And it's just gonna keep living on.
I think, like, the timeless quality of death
is probably just that.
It's, like, timelessness,
you're no longer bound by time,
and...
probably experiencing a great amount of freedom in that.
That seems kinda beautiful to me.
It occurs to me all the time that we're just, like,
trapped in time, and, like,
worried about time running out.
All that scarcity,
all that fear of dying, and aging, and losing,
and that seems like the point where we become un-trapped.
This one's about death.
I'm currently reading this from the "Ultimate Ancestor" chapter.
I take refuge in the, uh,
Taoist attitude towards death.
Um...
Uh, and death is fairly imminent for me at this point in time.
And this is my bulwark, so to speak.
"Wonderful, how the Maker of Things is turning me
into this crumpled thing.
He hunches my back.
He hunches me, and sticks out my back.
The five pipes of the spine run up above my head,
and my chin hides down in my navel.
My shoulders are higher than my crown,
and a knobbly bone in my neck points up at the sky.
The energies of yin and yang are all awry.
His heart was at ease, and he had nothing to do.
He tottered out to look at his reflection in the well.
Ugh, the Master of Things still goes on turning me
into this crumpled thing.
Do you hate it?
No, why should I hate it?
Little by little, he'll borrow my left arm
to transform it into a cock.
And it will be while I am listening
to the cock crow at dawn.
Little by little, he'll borrow my right arm
to transform it into a crossbow.
And it will be while I am waiting
for a roasted owl for dinner.
Little by little, he'll borrow and transform
my buttocks into wheels, my demon into a horse.
And they'll be there for me to ride.
I'll never have to harness a team again.
Besides, to get life
is to be on time,
and to lose it is to be on course."
♪ My dearest dear, ♪
♪ The time draws near ♪
♪ When you and I must part ♪
♪ And no one knows the inner grief ♪
♪ Of my poor aching heart ♪
♪ Or what I've suffered for your sake, ♪
♪ The one I love so dear ♪
♪ I wish that I could go with you ♪
♪ Or you might tarry here ♪
♪ I wished your breast was made of glass ♪
♪ And in it I'd behold ♪
♪ My name in secret I would write ♪
♪ In letters of bright gold ♪
♪ My name in secret I would write ♪
♪ Believe me when I say ♪
♪ You are the man that I'll love best ♪
♪ Unto my dying day ♪
♪ And when you're on some distant shore ♪
♪ Think on your absent friend ♪
♪ And when the wind blows high and clear ♪
♪ A line to me, pray send ♪
♪ And when the wind blows high and clear ♪
♪ Pray send it, love, to me ♪
♪ That I might know by your hand-write ♪
♪ How times has gone with thee ♪
♪ Just a few more weary days ♪
♪ And then I'll fly away ♪
♪ To a land where joy shall never end ♪
♪ I'll fly away ♪
♪ Oh, glory ♪
♪ I'll fly away ♪
♪ In the morning ♪
♪ When I die ♪
♪ Hallelujah, by and by ♪
♪ I'll fly away ♪
♪ Oh, glory ♪
♪ I'll fly away ♪
♪ In the morning ♪
♪ When I die ♪
♪ Hallelujah, by and by ♪
♪ ♪I'll fly away