Once again I’ve been struggling with how to write about this place. It’s not that it’s not wonderful; it is. And it’s not that nothing happens; it does. I’m going to blame it on not wearing a watch. Without a watch, one day just bleeds into the next, and combine that with all the incense and all the nature and all the vibes floating around up here, and I think I’m basically just stoned on scenery every day. This is a place that demands a different kind of artist than I am - it needs a painter, a photographer, hell, maybe even a musician would have better luck than a writer. As it is, all I want to write about is sunrises and raindrops on banana leaves, but then I get distracted by a bird and suddenly my whole day is gone, and anyway, there’s not much to say about a sunrise is there? Either you get to see it or you don’t, but any description just ends up sounding like the Nature Channel version of a steamy romance novel.
Today, however, something worth talking about happened. I took a bath. This in and of itself may not sound remarkable, but it’s all about location. I took a bath in a rain storm. I took a bath in a rain storm, while surrounded by rain forest. This bath-taking occurred outside. So I lounged in steaming hot water, encompassed by trees, in a beautiful mosaic tub, with a beach umbrella over my head, while it poured down rain around me, and the happiest frogs since Warner Brothers croaked enthusiastically in a nearby pond. I also had a mug of homemade chai with me. I think this, inarguably, is probably just about the coolest thing ever. I feel like I won something, although I’m not exactly sure how, because I’m very suspicious about entering contests. The situation was made even more remarkable by the low-lying and very dastardly looking clouds that were sweeping up the valley, successfully cutting off our hilltop from the rest of the world. I felt like I was bathing in a rainforest in a cloud. This is my new happy place. Before, when I got too stressed and frazzled by my abusive relationship with New York City, I used to picture little puppies, and the floppy way they run because the adorable little bastards still don’t quite know how to use their paws; from here on out, I will picture my tub.
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| Who knew banana fruit grew so strangely? |
Now, you may be wondering, “if you can see into the valley, doesn’t that mean this tub is sort of, I don’t know, out in the open? Exposed, as it were?” The answer is yes, and it is time for me to confess something about this farm that I’ve neglected to mention. It’s run by naturalists, aka nudists, aka the farmer and his wife and his 18 month-old son very often don’t have clothes on, which is fairly normal for an 18 month-old but perhaps slightly less normal for a farmer and his wife. I don’t know, I don’t know that many farmers.
Other Kate and I both knew this before we got here, and I think it’s safe to say that neither of us quite knew how we felt about it. But after seeing how comfortable our hosts were (and after solving the initial problem of eye contact), Other Kate and I both decided that this seemed pretty cool. After a little further discussion, we decided to go for it. After a hell of a lot of giggling, we actually managed to remove a little clothing. After a few moments of feeling the breeze, we realized that the full monty was maybe a little more than either of us had bargained for, and we reached a happy medium. So I can now proudly say that I have mulched, and weeded, and picked tomatoes, all while letting the girls see a little sunshine, albeit through a thick paste of SPF 50. I have in fact thrown a variety of shit at plants all while half-monty’d (none of the shit was literal shit, this is a vegan farm and I think in some way that I don’t fully understand, animal shit is not vegan). I have thrown seeds and fertilizer and wood chips; I have sprinkled and tossed and scattered. And I did it all without a shirt.
I don’t know that I’m going to run off and join a nudist colony anytime soon, but I will say that it has been an interesting, dare I say liberating, experience, and I’ve very much enjoyed the decrease in laundry that goes along with wearing less clothing. In any case, it facilitated that bath, and I would happily give the shirt off my back all over again for another one of those.
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