i spoke at length with my friend sky on the phone last night. i love to listen to sky's voice; his cadence and intonation are familiar to me at an instinctive level and regardless of the subjects we wander into, i have the feeling of being in deep and necessary conversation. two years ago, he left the urban sprawl to pursue his dream of building a permaculture farm near mount lassen in the small town where he grew up. we corresponded via phone, email, snail mail and several visits as he situated himself onto his piece of land and continued living his legend. let me back up for a moment and provide some necessary context. when i met sky in oakland a few years prior, he was working at the local building and home reuse store - a place where one can wander amongst hundreds of used toilet bowls, doors, windows, shutters, chairs, tables, books, records - and i immediately sensed a kinship with him. we familiarized ourselves over bonfires in trash cans at the corner permaculture center, he would show up on his cruiser bicycle with his ukulele and elderberry branches and spin stories about the time he'd spent living off the land in the santa cruz mountains; i would be cooking soup for a crowd in the makeshift kitchen, sharing vintage tins full of homemade cookies and promoting my effort to start the first public seed library in oakland. we didn't immediately connect with ease (we were both equally intrigued and intimidated by the other), but we hovered around each other, easing into the energy that resonated between us. at the time sky had just moved off of a boat that he was living on and restoring in the berkeley marina and was living in his airstream that he parked on the driveway of a dilapidated mansion and urban farm in a rough part of the city. i was transitioning out of a small studio apartment near lake merritt where i'd been for nine years, living in various sublets across the city while the bulk of my belongings were put up in storage, looking for a new place to land. in those moments when we were easing into knowing, i convinced myself that sky was one of those wild rambling men who i always found so enticing, but who would never think twice about a girl who tended more towards staying than traveling, more towards peaceful retreat than the wild unknown.