The rain was streaming down on the summer afternoon in 2012 when Gavin Munro realized with chagrin that he had gotten exactly what he’d wished for.
He had spent the morning hunched over in his black slicker, working willow branches into new shapes. Lunch had been miso soup and oatcakes, same as every day, and after that frugal meal it had been hard to convince himself to return to the field. It was 3:00, when he paused each afternoon to take a picture, as a marker of time in a decade-long plan. Even now, standing in a forest of chairs sprouting directly from the ground, it was hard to believe that plan could work.
He paused a long moment, alone, before stooping back down, thinking—“Shit, I got what I asked for. I’m a chair farmer.”