I think I first became aware of Cathy Stewart when I read her quite interesting blog, someone sent it to me a couple of years ago.  She lived a couple of blocks from one of the New York Carriage Horse stables and loved the sound of the horses hooves on the pavement as they made their way to and from the park.

At the time, the plight of the carriage drivers was acute, they were dispirited and nearly defeated, beset by years of cruel and mostly dishonest harassment by some animal rights groups in New York, now pursued by the mayor and  his real estate developer fund-raisers as well. Their cause seemed hopeless to them. Cathy and i both started fighting for it at the same time. To our astonishment, they won. Truth matters, if people will fight for it.

Cathy wrote about the horses in somewhat the same way I did, she was curious, wanted to learn for herself, was not afraid to speak up with her words and her camera. She is, after all, a political organizer, I liked her voice and mind.

I loved the way she wrote about the horses, and I loved the photographs she took of them. I have learned a lot about friendship in recent years, and I think friendships are born out of kindred spirits, people joined in some way at the soul, often for reasons they can’t begin to understand.

A therapist told me that unhealthy friendships, especially co-dependent and impulsive ones, end badly. Always. Follow your feelings, if it doesn’t feel good, run and hide. But get away.

I felt that Cathy and I were kindred spirits from the start, and it was good to see that our friendship grew, slowly, in stages, without any kind of pressure or confusion.

Real friendships, I now know,  feel good. They are nourishing, uplifting, comforting. There is no he-said, she said to them. You don’t walk away or get off the phone wondering what happened, what was meant, what was really said.

Cathy and her husband Harry came to one of the Open Houses, and I was impressed by their generous, open and warm manner. She was connected without ever being intrusive, she has a rich and busy life of her own. So does Harry, an attorney in Manhattan. She and Harry are both community activists in New York, fighting for the poor, the struggling, for the rise of independent politics to right some of the wrongs and failures of the two-party system, which excludes so many people and ideas.

In a sense, they both are quixotic figures, tilting against powerful and almost indestructible windmills. Even in wealthy and gentrifying New York, they are not daunted, discouraged or embittered by a lifetime of climbing uphill. But Cathy fell in love with this country just as I did 15 years ago, I recognized it right away. One day soon, I told her, you will be up here.

She shook her head and laughed, no way, she said, too expensive, too difficult.

But I could see it coming, the gleam was in their eyes. Cathy and Harry started visiting my county on weekends, exploring it, falling in love with it. They went to the Round House, the food co-op, they found Jack’s Outback, they loved the quiet and the hills. City mice drawn to the country.  A few months ago, Cathy and Harry and their friends Gail and Nancy bought a house not too far up the road from us, this week they are spending their first holiday here.

We will spend part of the holidays with them. Maria feels just as connected to the city mice as I do, there is this remarkable comfort level.We are having fund guiding them through the mysteries of rural life – you don’t have to put water on cold ashes, you don’t need a pooper scooper to walk in the woods, yes, bears will come by if you leave suet in the feeders. We trade the names of handymen and the big men in trucks who plow snow and fix broken things. We warn them off horrid restaurants and steer them to the good ones. Life is New York City is not easy, they all say their bedrooms are bigger than their apartments and cost a fourth as much. We will have fun watching them flower here.

Cathy is also a gifted and rapidly-evolving photographer. Yesterday we went on a photo shoot together in the deep woods where Maria and I and the dogs love to walk We were just hours before a storm, Harry was walking his dog, Maria was obsessing on the Frieda Kahlo bathroom, Cathy and I walked for an hour or so in the afternoon sun, watching the dogs race up and down the path. I felt I had known Cathy for many years, this is already a friendship that was nourishing, bounded, full of trust.

So there it is, a Christmas gift. Friendships are complex, confusing, mysterious. Several of them have burst into my life, then settled, like a cup of steeped tea. They will take their own time and have their own way. Cathy will need the country this year, she is busy, her plans filled with important work and travel in a political year. I know how important her new place in the country will be to her. I imagine she will also be living her all of the time when her life takes her in that direction. Maybe so, maybe not.

The woods were beautiful, dark and deep, we paused to take our photos, some of one another, some of the dogs, some of the trees and the gnarled old trunks. We talked, were quiet, it was easy. Nourishing. She came in the house and she and Maria resolved the colors of the bathroom in a minute. I was very glad to see her in there.

I am grateful to know Cathy, and also Harry and Gail and Nancy, they are good and honest people, working to make the world a better place. For me, there is no better bonding experience than taking the dogs and two good cameras  and people out into the woods in the early afternoon, when the sun is slanting into the woods from the West.

Photographer’s light. I’m happy to introduce you to poor Cathy, who is now drawn into the Bedlam Experience,  and recommend her fine blog, which I am already bugging her to pay even more attention.