|
Our carefree nomadic RV days officially ended on June 1st of last year, when, upon our return from Galapagos, we closed on our farm in New Hampshire. In the third major move of my life, I once again find myself in a mountain environment. From the flanks of Hualalai volcano in Kona, to the slopes of Mt. Sopris outside of Aspen, to a riverside farm in the foothills of New Hampshire's White Mountains. By mid July, we broke ground for our guest house, and shortly thereafter, for our barn and attached indoor riding arena. Of course, nothing ever goes according to schedule, and though we were promised everything would be finished by the time we returned from the Solomons in early December, much work on the barn and arena remained yet to complete. However, the guest house got finished, and we were at last able to move onto the farm in time for a New Hampshire white Christmas. At some point in the near future, we will tear down the 200 year old farm house, saving only the old hand-hewn beams, some original hardware and vintage floor boards. At that point, we'll build a new house for ourselves that will attempt, with great effort, to look like a 200 year old farm house when we're done. Go figure.
Enough stalls were completed in the barn before winter so we were able to give our horses a bit of shelter during the worst of New England's snow. The routines of farm life we've found to be very calming, even when the weather is harsh. Each morning we would walk from our house to the pastures. After nights when we stalled the horses, we would first turn them out and watch in delight as they would search for the perfect spot, drop to their knees, lie down and roll several times in the freshly fallen snow, only to leap up and begin frolicking with sudden, wild exuberance. They'd race around the pasture, executing perfect sliding stops through the powder, pivot, buck and kick at the air, then charge back in full gallop to the opposite fence.
After watching these frozen morning rodeos, it would come time to clean their stalls. The manure production of a single 1100 pound horse in a 12 hour period is truly one of the great wonders of nature. But even such chores as this, when approached in a positive frame of mind, are both meditative and fulfilling, though I'm not quite ready to write ``The Zen of Stall Mucking" just yet. But as I bravely worked my manure rake under yet another magnificent artifact of equine metabolism, I did amuse myself with introspections on my astonishing metamorphosis as an adult. What strange twists of fate have brought me to this present, most humble state, having previously taken me around the globe time and again to explore and photograph the world's finest reefs, to author two acclaimed, award-winning photographic books, to marry such an incredible person as Birgitte, and then, as I begin looking back at 50, to realize that, after such a glitzy, adventure-filled journey to middle age, I have mutated, at last, into nothing more than a bipedal, tool-wielding dung beetle.
The spring season in New Hampshire is in full bloom and soon we will put the finishing touches on our equestrian facilities and prepare for the grand opening of Kokonini Farm sometime in summer. The coming of summer also means that shortly insurance salesmen, CPAs, doctors and lawyers, bookkeepers, therapists, clerks and consultants, financial advisors, librarians and managers from innumerable respected professions around this great country of ours will take off from work a couple of weeks early in order to stop shaving, bathing, brushing their teeth and hair, and generally suspending all other accepted forms of personal hygiene, in preparation of donning their meticulously unwashed ``colors", mounting their mean black and chrome Harley hogs, and thundering off to Bike Week in New Hampshire. I guess there's a bigger rally somewhere -- South Dakota if I'm not mistaken -- but then, South Dakota is three times larger than New Hampshire. So when 300,000 of the gnarliest, badass outlaw bikers Sonny Barger ever dreamed of pour into the Granite State, there's no escape from the assault and pity the poor naif who shows up on a cheerfully colored Japanese motorcycle! Apparently the size of a biker's... piston perhaps?... is advertised in decibels, and the roar of unmuffled engines fill the air like mechanical mating calls, merging by darkness into one continuous high octane howl. It's the internal combustion equivalent of the cicadas' love song on a hot summer's night, amplified into a deafening clamor of impossible magnitude.
Other than that, I gather the main purpose of coming here is to breathe exhaust fumes and ride around in circles until they need gas, then to pull into gas stations filled with fellow bikers refueling, smoke, admire one another's hogs and watch still more bikers not yet out of gas drive around in circles. This goes on for a week straight. But everyone has fun, and it's relatively safe, the biggest danger generally being standing too close to biker chicks whose expansive, corsetted bodies strain mightily at their girdles of studded, black leather chaps and matching bodices. It's a testimony to advanced sartorial engineering and the structural integrity of dead cow skin and steel rivets that these constructions are ever able to contain the rising tides of imprisoned, riotous flesh that threaten to burst forth at any moment with devastating effect on innocent bystanders. It begins ominously with a sharp, ripping sound, as the cohesive molecular forces of the materials are at last overcome by the immense stockpiled energy generated by years of Big Macs, fries, Cokes and forever flopping on the couch endlessly watching tv. Then in a catastrophe of Biblical proportions, a colossal explosion rivaling the Big Bang releases a cellulite tsunami into the surrounding masses as they are instantly crushed by this onrushing wave of spectacularly liberated bellies, bums and bosoms.
Such tragedies aside, the bikers drop something on the order of 200 million dollars during their bone rattling stay, and the worst that may actually happen is rain, something the bikers fear more than noise ordinances and radar guns. See, if it rains, all their tattoos wash away. God bless America! |
