A soul-searcher's journey

The general consensus among the locals seemed to be that Kyle was crazy.
This is already his second attempt, and I frankly just don't think it can be done in this climate.
He is obsessed with this idea, he has no job but a wife and kids. Completely irresponsible if you ask me.
All he does is dig in the dirt, trying to build this earthship while the house is falling apart. It's tragic, really.
Our interest was peaked. What was the deal with this guy?
The next day we crammed into Paul's little Toyota corolla and headed north. Vette, her calf, and the goats kept chewing their grass, indifferent to the expectations that surely must have buzzed over our heads like a swarm of bees as we pulled out of the farm's drive-way.
When we arrived, we were first greeted by Susan, Kyle's wife.
Hi, sorry I can't invite you in, one of the boys is down with the stomach flue.
I was shocked. This was not the timid little housewife I had imagined, pale and hollow-eyed with a hunchback from carrying the burden of raising three kids by herself, abandoned by her deluded husband who was digging what might as well be his own grave in the backyard.
Standing tall and upright, giving me a firm handshake and wide smile, Susan made me feel like a hunchback myself. Her skin was a healthy tan, probably from spending a lot of time not being chained to a stove but rather being outside. Her dark hair was pulled back in a pony-tail as bouncy as her entire self.
Susan led us to the earthship, and I was floored for the second time: from the entrance you could see down a hallway that led into what was going to be a kitchen. There was a sink from which, as Kyle later would explain to us, the water would be led into the greenhouse, where it would be filtered by the plants before returning to the ground. Same went for the shower. Everything had a Mediterranean feel to it, due to the clay and stones being used as construction material. The spacious area to the right off the hallway was still unfinished, with the tires that formed the walls visible. Nevertheless I could picture the dining and the family room, and the conversations and the laughter that would indubitably one day be shared here along with a meal prepared on the wood-burning stove.
It was then, before I had even seen the lofty light greenhouse with its curvy beds, or spoken a single word to Kyle, that I knew that this was not the work of an obsessive maniac. This was art, and Kyle was a bona fide visionary.