Building a Wilderness with Louis Le Roy

Louis’ living room has all the traces of an old man with an obsession: books, photographs, odd objects that may have been gifts from admiring fans.[1] It is a dark room, but in a bright way, with a wall-sized window looking out onto his garden, which is not really a garden. Louis and I have periodic conversations every few weeks while I stay nearby in Heerenveen, where I work at the Kennedylaan location and in the original Ecocathedral at Mildam, near where he lives. I have worked in Sydney as a gardener at a hostel where rural cancer patients stayed while they were being treated and I recognize his frustration at not being able to work, which I saw in the old farmers at the hostel. When Louis and I talk, his constant admonition is ‘just do it.’ Yet, because of his age and injuries, we are forced instead to ‘talk about it.’ He is a natural talker, and his work at the Ecocathedral is so interesting, because it is a very banal and thoughtless activity while at the same time it is a very abstract intellectual project. Louis and I like each other even though when I am with him he refers to me in the third person as ‘the stupid Australian.’