I was driving over the mountain to get to my gym this afternoon when I came upon an Amish horse team – two big horses – pulling a platform and turning into a driveway.

I’d seen the buggy go past us earlier carrying a lot of lumber.

As the buggy turned, I saw a figure standing up and holding the reins. I  recognized him immediately. It was Moise.

He saw me about the same time and turned and waved enthusiastically and repeatedly.

I waved back. I understand that Moise and I were talking to one another, and as both of us are strong-willed men; we weren’t sitting down to talk over a cup of coffee; we were waving at one another from a distance.

It felt sincere to me; Moise doesn’t fake things or pretend – he is almost passionately honest.

I tried to be the same way; we were saying hello. I hadn’t seen Moise in more than a month or spoken to him for twice as long.

It felt sad.

I felt a stab in the heart, seeing Moise waving to him. I miss him.

My mind went back to when we first met last Spring. We both were delighted to run into each other and become friends. The friendship took off and was exceptional on many levels.

We had a lot in common. He loved to come over and browse through my blog.

We both had braved the unknown to leave the ordinary behind and move to a distant and unfamiliar place.

It was a great risk for both of us, and we each admired the other for taking it and pulling it off.

Moise had a dry sense of humor and a charismatic personality. We talked easily and openly.

I had never met anyone like him, and he had never met anyone like me, and we both reveled in telling our stories to one another.

I loved watching him bargain the socks of seasoned salespeople and tight-fisted builders. He always got his discount.

I  drove him all over creation as he wheeled and dealed and bargained and plotted for the many supplies he needed to build his barn, his new house, and the houses of two members of his family, who had come here because of him.

He wanted them all to come. He feels responsible for all of them.

Moise is a builder and a keeper of the land. Plowing and bargaining and carpentry are his passions, and he is brilliant at both.

Moise lit up and enchanted this small community; he was different; he reclaimed lost farmland, rode around on old wagons drawn by horses; he knew how to find people who would like him and help him. He had money to spend.

The Amish can’t maintain the mechanics of their lifestyle all by themselves; they need help from the people they call the English, who they dread and depend on. People like me

He was happy to find me just down the road. He said he couldn’t believe it.

Moise was happy to have me as a friend who understood the gamble he had taken, but I was; we both knew his worst enemy, an infidel who loved to write about his life and take pictures everywhere he went.

He also knew I wrote on the Internet and knew how to navigate.

I think I never made it clear to Moise that I wasn’t retired with tons of time on his hands. I was a writer, a blogger; I ran a group called the Army Of Good; I am committed to my photography.

None of these are things the Amish do or can easily relate to.

But I never said no.

We would often go online together, Moise sitting behind me, trolling for bargains and the best possible prices. I learned from him how to negotiate free shipping from people who told me it was impossible. I taught him much about how the Internet works.

It was both fun and intimate at the same time. We sat next to each other and explored the world.

I was his perfect storm; we both knew how it had to end on some level.

But while it lasted, it was a riot, a fantastic experience.

He and I bought plants and seeds for his fields, I was trusted with driving him and his family to train and bus stations. I ordered his blueberry bushes.

I was their go-to online and phone person, one of several.

I bought display stands for his vegetables, Amish romances for his daughters, Amish adventure stories for his sons, school books for learning, Mountain Dews and lollipops on hot days, donut and cookie boxes, pie tins and pizza when it snowed, candy for the children, boots for the family, and wallets for the men to replace the disintegrating ones of their fathers.

I copied receipt forms for his son John and got mittens for the new babies coming into the family. There were always new babies. I wanted to fill some of the holes in their hard lives. I have never in my life seen anyone work as hard as Moise.

I got paid for everything I was asked to do, not for things I decided to do.

That is fair and right, it was my choice,  but it made boundaries fuzzy for me and challenging to define. I wanted to help them. They needed help, even if they didn’t ask for it.

I know the importance of boundaries. They save friendships. They can also destroy them.

Moise was neither needy nor helpless. He can take care of himself.

And Moise knows how to take care of himself. I’ve seen him in action. He is a life force of his own, a strong wind that can blow weaker people down.

Moise’s dream was coming true.

He plans to build homes for 12 of his 13 children, and he will do it. Family and Church are everything to him.

I know we are both strong men.

I know we are both determined to get our way. I know we both hate being told what to do and insist on living the way we want. I know we are rigid and unyielding in many parts of our lives.

He is a man of absolute faith; I am an outsider creating his own kind of faith, a creative faith. It is not something Moise could understand.

We both believe deeply in what we do. We will fight anyone who tries to take our freedom away from us.

I am an outsider everywhere I go, including in my small and beautiful village. The Amish world is, in a way, a most exclusive club; it accepts no outsiders and builds every wall around itself that it can. In the final analysis, they trust only one another.

You don’t get in by being a friend or a nice guy or helping them out. You can’t get in, period.

Like most observant Amish, Moise is in the challenging position of needing to use the technology they fear and disdain. They hire people to do it for them. I was one of those, only I would never take the money. They are neighbors, after all.

They are often forced into a kind of hypocrisy by faith, perhaps the most challenging kind to deal with.

Technology is the lure that may break down their walls and draw their children away from the family. It is what they most need and most fear. Like the first American farmers, their children make their lives on the farm possible. Lots of Amish people are losing their farms or giving them up.

Their problem is that they need people like me to live the way they wish. Yet we often can’t adapt to their practices and rules. That is a big hole in the system.

Our friendship was further complicated by the small-town nastiness known to TV and movie watchers and writers from Anne Tyler to William Faulkner to Joan Didion to Flannery O’Connor.

They are called wags, and they live off of gossip, scandal, and other people’s business. They love social media and live around Facebook.

My friendship with Moise created a lot of buzzing in town about the dangers of being public, and soon enough, people whispered in his ear about my photos and blog.

People began calling me with concerns about the safety of his buggies, their difficulties seeing them at night, the occasional manure droppings from the horses (bicyclists don’t like it.)

Moise seemed to have a simple rule.

If his grandfather did it, that was how it should be done. Patriarchs are not taught to listen.

It wasn’t my job to tell Moise what to do, and he rarely changed his mind about anything. For the longest while, our friendship was a monument to acceptance and tolerance.

It still is, in a way, but it had to run into a wall of ideology and history.

I love Moise as much as I did when we first met. I admire him even more.

The end of our friendship was not a surprise to me. I regret none of it.

It had to happen. I never lied to Moise or hid what I was doing. He never lied to me, but he couldn’t support me under pressure either.

At some point, it became a problem. Of course, it did.

Moise is an Amish elder in a sect that forbids pictures and does not want their secrets exposed. In the end, we all do what we have to do to survive.

Me too, for sure. I know I will never be a “local,” and that’s okay with me; I like it on the outside.

No club would ever have me. There is no club I wish to join.

Like me, Moise does what he needs to protect his life, family, and community, and I admire his character, although I can never be too easy around Patriarchs.

That is not a pathway to intimacy.

When I was young, I lived with a patriarch, I didn’t like it, and I was not a woman.

In the end, I was doing too much, and Moise was taking too much.

I see it not as a deal with the devil but with God. We each thought we were doing his work.

I got an awful lot out of it; I got to enter and explore and write about a fascinating world that was generally closed to people like me.

They let me into the kitchen but never invited me into the house. Towards the end, I felt like a grandfather to his children; some even called me “Grandpop.” I liked that.

That couldn’t last either.

Next to Maria, writing is everything to me and is all of me. So is my photography, which has liberated the suffocating artist buried down deep.

I knew what I was doing when I got to know Moise and the Amish. I feel close to them still; I always will.

I got a rare and wonderful chance to penetrate a fascinating world most people knew nothing about. That is a writer’s dream. And it came true. I loved writing about it; I loved every distant or blocked photo that I could take.

Moise and I were just two guys who liked one another and who needed a friend. It was as simple as that. But life is much more complicated than that, especially life involving an Amish elder and me.

The truth is that Moise and I exploited one another.

We are both honest but perhaps not as noble as we think we are or would like to be. The problem is we are both human, no matter what we wear, pray to or ride.

The friendship became unhealthy. I don’t want to be somebody’s driver or pie pan and train ticket clerk. I work hard and long hours, and I am not retired, like so many people the Amish find to help them.

I have no patience with gossips; they give me the creeps. I got too hot to handle.

And I needed to get back to my other work.

He needed to have a friend who was more pliant and obedient. He was catching flak about me.

We both went with what worked best for us, not necessarily what was right. There are no bad guys in this story, only two connected but also are very different men trying to make their way through a challenging and sometimes hostile world.

It worked until it didn’t. It was great while it lasted.

I can’t speak for Moise, but it taught me much and revealed a great deal about me, some good and some bad. I learn from both.

And isn’t that the story of me, and the story of Moise, and the story of Moise and all humanity? There is some good and some bad in all of us.

The world insists we be heroes and saints, but we are all human. It’s just that nobody wrote about what the saints were really like. They were human too.

Moise can ride all the buggies and wear all the black hats and beards that he wants.

The bottom line is that we are both the same; we are good and evil and far from perfect.

This is what connected us and what pulled us apart.

Whether we run into one another or not, we will never talk to each other about this. This is the way of the Amish; this is the way of men. But I keep trying to work it out.

As I rounded the corner, Moise turned and gave me a final wave. I lowered the car window and stuck my hand out, returning the gesture.

Then, I was down the hill, and he was out of sight.

I realized a few minutes later that this isn’t our way of saying hello, but of saying goodbye.