I spent 90 minutes with my Amish friend Moise this afternoon.

I drove him to the Glens Falls, N.Y., bus station to ride five hours upstate on a bus to visit his daughter and see his new grandson.

His daughter is moving down here from way up Upstate New York; she will be just a couple of miles away in a couple of months. His sister lives five miles to the South.

Amish people cannot drive cars or motorized vehicles to enlist friends and neighbors to drive them. I was happy to agree and spend more time with Moise.

Moise knows all the train and bus schedules by heart.

When we got into the car – I picked him up at his farm – I told him he shouldn’t feel any pressure to talk; if he wished to rest or remain silent, he should feel free to do that.

He nodded but said he could rest on the bus if he was tired.

He has been working feverishly and non-stop to finish his farmstand shed and get his farm ready for summer and plow 30 acres by himself and his horses.

I thought he might need some quiet time.

I was wrong.

We made at least a dozen stops.

I only got out of the car two or three times.

Still, I was exhausted just watching Moise as he asked me to pull over so he could check the soil and grass of nearly a dozen pastures and farms, search for a credit union, stop at a convenience store to get food for the bus ride, inspect his daughter’s new land, eyeball some homemade fence posts,  and direct me as I went online on my Iphone so we could study the price and details of fencing for the sheep and goats he plans to buy for his farm.

We looked at many fences, every fence online, it seemed,  as Moise decided he would make the fenceposts himself and just needed to buy wiring.

Then he decided he might make the wiring himself.

My only gaffe on the trip was to suggest he consider two-ply electric fencing for the sheep, which was so much cheaper.

I realized by the horrified look on his face that he could not, of course, use electricity, something I already knew but forgot.

When I got home, I nearly collapsed in the living room.

I did fall asleep.

The thing is, I think we both had a great time.

We were an odd couple, for sure, yet it seemed we had known one another a long time.  On top of everything else, Moise is a lot younger than I am.

I’m not sure if this is possible or how it might be.

It felt good, though.

The Amish are not permitted to lie, so I believe him when he said this was the most fun he had had since plowing his fields himself with his horses, which he said is his absolutely most favorite activity in the world.

“I first plowed a field when I was five,” he said, “I loved it from the very beginning.” It is heart-stopping to watch him wrestle with his hand plow right behind three giant horses, fighting every step of the way with boulders and shards of rock.

Mosie asked me what my favorite activity in the world was. I didn’t have the stomach to tell him it was driving into Bennington to get Ramuntos pizza once a week or watching British mysteries on my Iphone deep into the night. (Maria says my favorite thing is writing, but I wasn’t about to say that or suggest anything raunchy.)

I learned a big lesson about the Amish from Moise today. There is no such thing as idle time, no time when there is nothing to do or plan to do or consider doing.

I turned off my GPS out of consideration for Moise since the Amish do not use electronic devices for anything.  Before he got in the car, I checked the mileage. The Ridge Street Bus Terminal was 29 miles from us, a trip that was estimated to take 52 minutes.

As it happened, we got there just in time. Mosie was curious about many things, but he does move quickly and doesn’t dawdle – ever.

As we headed out, I asked him if he and his wife Barbara ever accepted dinner invitations at the houses of “English,” which refers to all non-Amish people. (I thought what my grandmother might have made of our being referred to as “English.” She was born in Kyiv, then part of Russia.)

I wondered if he would be comfortable about having dinner at hour farmhouse. I said it was fine to say no.

He paused a bit and looked out the window.

“Well, yes, sometimes,” he said. “As long as there is no partying,” I assured him there was no partying of any kind at Bedlam Farm.  We only had gatherings of animals.

There was sometimes loud music, I said, but it would be turned off.

 

(Moise kept asking to stop so he could run up the hills to check on the pastures. I took this photo from the car.)

We went over our options, and we agreed to have an early dinner in the summer, perhaps out in the yard with some of the children.

He said then in the winter, perhaps we would come and have dinner with them, inside of his new house, not yet under construction. It sounded great.

I got the sense it wasn’t something he and Barbara did often.

Moise had a keen eye for the color of grass and pastures – he could spot a crop a half-mile away and quite often asked if I could stop so he could run out and check the grass close-up.

He bounded up the hills like a deer.

Moise loves grass or anything green.

We talked about many things.

He told me of the numerous regulatory battles the Amish have to wage with local building and safety inspectors and the times he had to go to court to fight “stop” orders on his houses because he wouldn’t install the various fire smoke detectors required by building codes.

He explained that he saw no point in having smoke detectors when he had a dog, Tina, who slept in the house every night and came into the bedroom if there is smoke. All of the children are regularly instructed in fire safety.

And then he paused. “And besides,” he said, “We put our trust in God to keep us safe.” I think that was the biggest reason. God is often in conflict with government officials.

That prompted a revealing talk about how faith drives the lives of the Amish. I told him of my own religious feelings, how I had always admired Christ but was disappointed that so many Christians had abandoned him.

He asked if I ever went to Church, and I said no, I always ran into the same problems with religion: they kept telling me what to do and think.

Moise said he had to build up his courage to challenge government rules, but there was no choice. Things had to be done in a certain way. I could see there was really no compromise.

The Amish always seek to avoid conflict and argument, he said, and there is almost always a way to work things out.

Moise believes God watches over him and his family. If something bad happens, it is God’s choice.

I told him I believe in what some call radical acceptance – accepting life as it happens, rather complaining about my life or regretting it. That was my idea of God.

One time, he said, a code inspector came to his house with smoke detectors, installed them himself, and then gave him a passing certificate. I didn’t ask him what happened when the inspector left.

Since Moise won’t lie, I’m careful about what I ask him about.

I gave Moise a bunch of books last week, knowing he had little of any time to read, but he shocked me by talking about the Washington County history book I gave him, which he said he read last night.

For the next few miles, he talked about the farms and tribes and immigrants who settled the country – the size of their farms, the animals they had, the crops they grew. I knew none of these things.

He said he brought a Wendell Berry book with him to read on the bus. It was “Farm,” Berry’s poem to his farm.

Moise told me how happy he was to have chosen the Battenkill Valley, as he calls it, to move to. The hills are beautiful; the people seem friendly. It was a good place for his family.

And unlike the place he left, there are enough people to buy lumber and baked goods. Still, he said the area seemed peaceful and unchanging to him, which was very important to the Amish.

I said he was about the biggest change I’d seen in a decade.

“Why don’t we send the girls down and clean up your lawn?” he suggested. Thanks, I said, we have hired someone to do that. Well, he said, if you have chores that need to be done, just come up and tell me.

I took it as an offering of friendship.

I could sense that he was comfortable with me, as I was with him, and we were both looking for ways to cross the great divide between us and find common ground. He isn’t just different from me; he comes from another world.

His mind never stops spinning, and it is almost always spinning about farming and the land and his work.

But the time we got to Glens Falls, I could also spot alfalfa growing in a field a mile away. Common ground.

Moise kept surprising me.

He told me in great detail how he planned to build his new house and how he and his family built the old one. It doesn’t take long, he says; they have worked for centuries on simple house frames.

I could tell Moise wasn’t quite sure when I was joking or not, so I was careful not to be too ironic or smart.

He does have a ready smile and an astonishing ability to absorb information.

I was pleased when we got to the bus station that we had a few minutes to spare, and I offered to wait with him in the parking lot.

We got out of the car, and he lit up his corncob pipe, stuffed with tobacco from a pouch.

Well, we have some time, he said; let’s drive down the street to a Credit Union I know about. I was surprised. I didn’t ask but wondered why a Credit Union.

He answered without being asked. “Banks don’t let Amish open accounts,” he said, “because we don’t have Social Security numbers, and they almost always require Social Security numbers. We don’t believe in that.”

We drove a few miles down the road, and there was a Credit Union, but it had just closed. I drove back to the Bus Station, and he went inside and was told the bus was just a few minutes away.

Time to catch our breath.

“Oh, well,” he said, “there’s time to look at fence prices.”

Moise assumes I know a lot more than I do know because he loves how we fenced the farm and maintain it.

My wisdom comes from hiring good people to do this work and marrying Maria. I really don’t know much of anything mechanical or agricultural, but he can’t quite accept that. He ignores me what I say it.

So the two of us browsed fences and fence prices ( I am a killer when it comes to shopping online) on my Iphone for about 15 minutes until the bus pulled up along the road. I did a pretty good job of finding fencing sales since Moise couldn’t use the phone himself.

As the bus opened its doors, Moise thanked me and asked me how much he owed me. Nothing, I said. You don’t want to take money for having a great time.

He thanked me. “If you need anything, come up and ask for help,” he said. It was a good thing to hear.

He nodded. “I wish we’d met when I got up here,” he said. “We would have had a lot of great times by now.”

“Sure thing,” I answered, “but we have plenty of time for more.”