Auf Wiedersehen Wamboldtopia

Are there adequate words to describe the experience of sharing just a bit, life lived out loud?

Impermanence may be an inevitable truth, but a permanent impact has been left with me from that experience.

Wamboldtopia's creators, Damaris and Ricki Pierce are saying goodbye to this chapter of their lives. Today was one last chance to visit the garden before the property changes hands. The place was packed. The grand finale was a sellout crowd.

What does one say to the melding of art and stone with a creativity unbound from convention, but Wow.

Almost six years ago I walked through the portal of Wamboldtopia a stranger and was welcomed with open hearts. It was an open invitation not just to a garden, but to the creative lives of its owners and to the larger community of West Asheville. It felt right, like it was meant to be, and I kept coming back.

Over the following years I watched the continuing creative vision take concrete form.

I witnessed a sense of freedom in the art of garden making and transforming your personal space I had never seen before. It wasn't about money. It wasn't about consumption. It was about a life's passion unleashed. I was intrigued.

And I witnessed many times over people's reaction to that freedom. It was wonderment.

I was not a complete stranger to that kind of freedom in garden making. I can certainly become obsessed or passionate at times. Let's just say it was a bit repressed in me by convention, by what others might think.

Then I saw wonderment when people were confronted with living life out loud. There was no need for fear anymore.

There was another improper garden close by. Mine wouldn't be the only one.

A garden can be much more than a collection of artfully arranged plants. It can engage all the senses and tap the deepest emotions. It can make you questions many of your assumptions.  A garden can be a safe haven for wild life and free minds.

I spotted another one of West Asheville's well known free thinking garden makers while I was there.

Wamboldtopia will live on in intricate pieces vibrating through a community and out into the larger world.

I was blessed to have experienced it. Yes you are loved.

And a bathtub angel will forever be a part of my dreams.