he day my neighbor ordered me to tear down the retaining wall that had been holding an entire hillside in place for 20 years. I remember standing there with the letter in my hand, thinking, “Well, this is either going to be very funny or very expensive.” Turns out it became both.
Now, before you picture some dramatic Hollywood feud between neighbors, you should know I’m not the kind of guy who looks for trouble. My name’s Luke Harper. I’m 47 years old and I’ve been running a small landscaping business outside Eugene, Oregon since the late 90s. Dirt, rock, drainage, grading, that’s been my world for most of my life.
Not glamorous work, but it pays the bills and it teaches you a lot about how land behaves when gravity and water decide to have a conversation. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned after 30 years of digging holes and fixing other people’s mistakes, it’s that hillsides always win. My house sits on one.
Back in 2002, when my wife and I bought the place, it was basically the only property we could afford that had enough space for our kids and a small shop for my equipment. The house itself wasn’t anything special. An old cedar place built sometime in the late ‘7s, but the lot had character, steep character. Picture a slope that drops about 8 ft from my backyard down to the three homes behind me.
