I think people are so interested in the Amish because there is a great mystery about them, large puzzles and riddles and small ones.

Why can tractors be used in the barn but not the field? Why ask people to make phone calls but never have one in the house? Why can they use tools but not buy them? Why haul modern machines but not ride in them?

The biggest mystery of the Amish, of course, is their very survival. From a band of 5,000 rebellious Anabaptists in 1900, they have mushroomed to more than 350,000 today.

So many forests, subcultures, social and religious movements have succumbed to the rapacious growth and greed of human beings, the Amish growth and stability is mysterious.

Their traditions and practices are stronger than ever at a time when so many traditions and religions are fading.

I’m deep into Donald B. Kraybill’s The Riddle of Amish Culture.

The book hoped to spark a conversation between the riddles on both sides of the cultural fence. The Amish I am meeting are puzzled by the ways of “the English” as they are of us.

“Why do you belong to a gym?,” asked Moise’s friend Eli today as I drove him to the bus in Glens Falls, “but hire someone to mow your lawn?”

I thought about this briefly and responded, “why do you ride in a car but can’t own one?”

I worried for a second that I had gone too far, but we both laughed, we had no answer for the other.

The dialogue that I am having and that Kraybill proposed challenges us to ponder the puzzles and inconsistencies of our own culture.

In learning about them and seeking to understand them, I am learning about myself and understanding myself in new and better ways.

I think this is the fascination for so many people about the Amish. They force us to look in the mirror at the way we worship, live, and love. But their very existence in the face of a brutally changing world is the biggest mystery of all.

The “English” have destroyed indigenous cultures in every part of the world. But the Amish just grow and grow, another part of the mystery that the Amish are.

I learn something new about the Amish almost every day.

___

I was interested in getting to know Eli, the father of the second Amish family I have driven to the Glens Falls, N.Y. Bus Station for a trek all the way to Canton, N.Y., up near the Canadian border.

I was shocked as we drove off with Eli, Edna, and their two tiny children when Mosie came up to the window side of the car to tell me how much he was enjoying reading “A Good Dog,” the sometimes sad story of my wonderful border collie Orson, who was euthanized after biting three people, one of them a child, severely.

Eli looked puzzled, and Mosie explained: “Jon is a book writer,” he said as if that explained everything. He’s finished Saving Simon, he told me. He asked me about the farmer who starved Simon.

This did blow my mind a bit.

“I really like the part about the school bus Orson (the dog)  tried to herd,” he said to me, laughing. I can’t get over that Moise is reading my books, one at a time. I think this is a strong statement of friendship; I feel it.

Eli and I had more than an hour to spend talking. Edna spoke only Pennsylvania Dutch (a dialect of High German spoken in parts of Pennsylvania, chiefly by descendants of 17th and `8th-century Protestant immigrants from the Rhineland).

I’ve heard Mosie and his family speak Pennsylvania Dutch on their farm, his son John told me that is the language they speak to each other when “English” is not around.

The Amish believe speaking a different language will help their children differentiate themselves from others and tighten the family’s sense of community.

During the trip, Edna never spoke to me or looked me in the eye. The children – perhaps two years old – spoke softly to their mother and fell asleep in the back.

Eli was very different than Mosie, reinforcing my discovery that there is a wide range of individualism in the Amish community. He is quicker to smile than Mosie but does not have the dry humor or irony of Mosie. He and I poke each other all the time now.

Moise has a fierce, almost compulsive curiosity. He wants to know about everything he sees.

Eli was very much the opposite, although in many ways he was the more congenial of the two.

Eli happily answered every question I asked, but he did not ask me any. He was not interested in my life.

Many of the Amish have that silent wall around them. They are friendly, but not too friendly. There is always a boundary, an invisible barrier.

That is how they survive, I gather, by staying apart.

Eli said the Amish liked Washington County, where I live, and predicted many more families are coming, drawn to the open space, the tiny and non-intrusive government, and the availability of scores of failing dairy farms.

I suspect they will save agriculture in our community.

It was clear that Mosie had discovered this area and led the movement down here. Eli said everyone in Canton was talking about moving.

It’s getting too crowded way upstate, Eli said; the Amish are feeling blocked in. Mosie was the first to come to Washington County.  He is the leader of a movement.

Eli is coming back in the summer to help build Mosie’s big horse and hay barn. I asked him how many people it would take to build an Amish barn.

“I like between 80 and 100 to come,” he said, “We come from all over to help and stay until the work is done. It takes about two weeks.”

Eli said he was not ready to move here,  he just bought a new house, and he felt they should stay in it for a little while. He loved Mosie and admired him.

“That Mosie,” he said smiling, “no grass grows under his feet.”

“Mosie has the vision,” he said, “I don’t really.”

While Eli was friendly and very open, he wasn’t as curious about the landscape as Moise was.

Mosie made me stop the car a dozen times as he wanted to inspect the soil on one farm after another. He seemed almost incapable of being still while Eli closed his eyes and rested at different points.

He took a look at the farms that whizzed by but never asked to stop and see one close-up.

Moise is a dynamo, the body is always moving, and the wheels are always spinning. Next to him, everyone looks as if they are standing still.

I see that Amish culture is easily misunderstood.

We admire the way they care for the elderly but don’t understand their rejection of telephones. The Amish remind me there are different ways to live, view family, and organize a vigorous social life.

There is a constant stream of people coming and going and visiting among the Amish, a coming and going even among the few families that have moved to my town. They keep their relationships alive.

They speak their own language, revere their own customs, see their farms in an almost sacred way.

And they differ greatly from one another.

Eli explained to me that the Amish who are drifting towards modern conveniences – battery-powered lights on horse carts, plastic screen windows on the carts, the use of phone booths, and colorful clothes – are called “upper class.”

He explained that the translation for this is “fancy.” The “fancy” Amish, centered around Lancaster, Pa., are the ones called “upper class.”  There are many in Ohio.

I listened to see if Eli was being sarcastic about the “upper-class Amish,” but he showed no sign of that.

Some of the “upper class” farmers, said Eli,  even had farm trucks and mechanized plows.

But Eli said he didn’t have any of those things, and neither did the Millers.

The two families were the closest of friends in Canton, N.Y., and they frequently visited one another. Eli said he has a 12-acre farm and makes wood sheds.

He smiled and said he didn’t have Mosie’s drive. He didn’t need more land.

Okay, I thought, you don’t really have to be ambitious and driven to be in the Amish community. Eli said he always intends to live in a house from which no other house is visible.

“Some of us don’t like to be seen,” he said. “Mosie wants to be seen.”

It was interesting; even though he and Mosie made very different choices, there was great affection and trust between them. There was no sign of jealousy or resentment, even though they disagreed on many things.

Their love for each other seemed striking and deep; this is somewhat unusual for men.

When I got to the bus station, Eli asked me to call someone to pick him and his family up at 10 p.m., when the long bus ride ended (his bus came at 4:30).

Barbara, Moise’s wife,  had made them some sandwiches for the trip.

Eli took out a piece of paper with the name and number of his ride carefully and neatly spelled out. He read out the number as I dialed it on my cell phone.

The person who answered was waiting for the call.

Eli did not speak directly to the phone but to me. “Ask him to meet us at 10 p.m. at the 7/11,” he said. The man repeated the directions loudly and then said goodbye.

Eli reached into his wallet – his wife and daughter were outstanding by the bus terminal where the bus was expected.

He took out a $20 and offered it to me. I declined. “I don’t take money from neighbors,” I said.

“I’m not a neighbor,” he said. “Well,” I answered, “you’re the neighbors best friend. I am not comfortable taking money for the ride to the bus.”

He decided to drop it, thanked me, got out of the car, and walked down to the bus stop. “I’ll see you in the summer when we come to raise the barn,” he said.

“I’ll be there.” I came over to say goodbye to Edna; she looked shyly down at the ground and spoke in Pennsylvania dutch, and smiled at me.