HER LIFE'S WORK

It makes sense that all three bridges at Bartlett Arboretum cross the Euphrates Creek. After all, the most perfect place on earth of biblical proportion—Eden—has long been connected with the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Bartlett is a little bit of paradise, to be sure. Owner Robin Macy's directions to travel there twenty miles from Wichita cross under and around the turnpike, but they also make complete sense. Just past the railroad tracks, at the intersection of Highway 55 and Line Street in Belle Plaine, the arboretum's distinctive stone columns mark the main entrance. Macy greets me at a walk-in gate with Sister Stella, her mostly-Labrador pound puppy.

“Have you been here before?” asks Macy, who gathers her wispy blonde hair on top of her head. A geometry teacher at Wichita Collegiate School, she wears a brown sweater laced with a few dried leaves. My answer of “no” excites her, as if she's about to share a hidden treasure.

Straight ahead is Macy's cottage. Over the door, a limestone plaque reads “At last, home,” contributing to the fairytale-like setting. Almost a century ago, Dr. Walter Bartlett built the nationally known fortyacre tree garden, and the small brick building as a carriage house. Over the years, it functioned as a gift shop and residence for Bartlett's family members. Macy renovated it recently, adding electricity and plumbing.

Inside, the walls are covered with tonguein- groove pine boards recycled from resident two-needle pines that met an early demise. Large black-and-white photos of long-ago visitors and wedding guests line the room. Wedged between one glass and frame, a small yellowed sign says what arboretum volunteer Alicia DePontier seems to be thinking as she enters with a weary but satisfied look: “Anyone who enjoys work can certainly have a helluva good time in this institution.”

Across from a camelback divan, a hint of Macy's life as a bluegrass musician hangs on the wall. She bought the 1930s Slingerland guitar, modeled after Maybelle Carter's f-hole, at a pawn shop for $32. She loves the way it sounds—“Like fifty years ago, like AM radio.”

She shows me a flyer promoting free trees to the first thousand who came to the arboretum in 1938, and stories of past Belle Plaine Tulip Time festivals. (The annual tradition, which once included 30,000 to 40,000 bulbs, sparked back to life last year with a crowd of 400 people.) Obviously, she's learned to love the arboretum as much as its original owners. And to think it all began because she took a wrong turn out of Winfield.

Macy was well aware that measured risks could bear fruit, as she drove in from Texas one hot August day in 1997 for the Walnut Valley Bluegrass Festival. Once, she'd had a vision of four young women playing and singing bluegrass. It came to life as she and her friends stood on a Dallas streetcorner, playing a handful of songs over and over. “We made three hundred bucks in forty-five minutes,” she recalls.

Belonging to the quartet, which later called themselves the Dixie Chicks, was a large part of her life. Yet when Macy came to “the arb” that day, she was just as certain that Belle Plaine was her future—not Nashville.

A for-sale sign out front caught her eye. Closed for five years, the arboretum was overgrown but beautiful. “These mammoth trees, the incredible stonework…I could tell it had been dearly loved for so, so long.” She knocked at the house when she now lives. No one answered. She wandered down the path, over a bridge, then to a house shaped like a hexagon. There, she met Mary Bartlett Gourlay, Dr. Bartlett's granddaughter, who was standing waist-high in family treasures amassed over the years.

As the women walked the grounds and talked, Macy knew it was meant to be, even though she'd never owned a piece of property in her life. She called a Wichita real estate office and waited for Charles Downs to arrive. She says she'll never forget the sight of him pulling up in a Lincoln Continental, wearing a Panama hat. Appearances were deceiving, but he didn't need to convince Macy the arboretum was an incredible property. “The plumbing didn't work, there was a drought, but I could see it was so much bigger than the present moment.”

Macy, who once prided herself in living like a gypsy, says she felt “serene-like. It was what I'd been looking for. I figured that, at 38, I'd either rolled through by coincidence or some divine plan. Because now, it's my life work.”

With old and new friends, she's spent countless back-breaking hours cutting back overgrowth, raking leaves, harvesting old trees and reforesting new ones. She's constantly thinking and dreaming about the next stage, and how to share it all: a privet hedge planted like a sundial, an eightyyear- old patch of wisteria that blooms the third week of April, the loblolly pines that overlook a patch of zoysia grass, the Bum Boat Dock (so named because the last time water was high enough to use it was 1914), a number of state champion trees and a Metasequoia redwood.

Recently, she added another odd-shaped building—a “garaj mah hall”—to house tractors and tools, a greenhouse, a handicapaccessible restroom, an indoor classroom and possibly a stage, where she and her musical friends can stage concerts. These days, Macy likes to keep life simple and lowkey, melding her sweet soprano voice with the stringed instruments she and her beau, Kenny White, play in small, intimate venues.

She wants to build an enormous screened-in porch or reception hall with a fireplace, where companies and creative types can come for retreats, a place for writing and music workshops, and thinktank sessions where high-tech A/V capabilities mesh with crickets chirping and a crackling fireplace in the background.

The arboretum's acceptance into the Sunflower Resource Conservation and Development program means there will be ample opportunity for donations. Now, when people wish to make a contribution or want to get married at Bartlett, they may write it off their taxes. “All donations go right back into the arboretum coffers in the form of trees or bridge repair,” Macy says, “or help pay high school kids to mow.”

All the paperwork is necessary, but takes time away from the physical side of caring for Bartlett. “I never want to stay at my desk long, because I'm eager to go get dirt under my nails,” she confesses.

Macy's ultimate goal is open-ended, but she knows that many could benefit from the arboretum's stress-relieving and educational benefits. “I want to find a way to make my little tiny town shine again and make this an inspiration to anyone who comes through that gate, whether it's a Boy Scout group, a recovery group, a garden club, a wedding party or a yoga class. I want it to continue to be sacred and protected and divine and spiritual. I want to share it so other people can have a life-changing experience here, just as I've had.”

Benefit concerts, family reunions, weddings and teddy bear picnics… these are just some of the events that have drawn people to Bartlett Arboretum recently. It is open to groups with reservations by e-mailing info@bartlettarboretum. com. On April 22 and 23, Macy is planning “Art at the Arb,” a unique outdoor exhibit and live music event. See the calendar section of the Take Off guide, p. 58, for more information about that event.