Knee Deep
Here I am, knee deep in chicken poo and I have no idea how to begin the story of how I got here, or why I am here at all. Nevertheless, here I am on a farm in Hurley, New York, busy wading through chicken shit, making friends with the spiders that terrify me, living in an old trailer and running from bees that burrow into my hair.
If only I knew how I got here.
The extraordinarily vague explanation (and also the only one I really have) would be that something pulled me here, something lead me here. I don’t know a damn thing about farming and it’s unbelievably out of my comfort zone. Why in the world would I choose this path? Strangely enough, I think its because I don’t know a damn thing about it and its out of my comfort zone. Confusing? It doesn’t make sense to me either.
You could say it’s like my own personal Rumspringa, my time to pretend like I’m Amish, forgoing my social responsibilities in order to experiment with life before settling down but with less cocaine and meth and more gardening and yoga.
Plenty of people look at me with confusion and blame, shocked at the level of my irresponsibility because I venture out into the wide world periodically. As I sit here in my trailer with the rain pounding on the metal roof and the thunder rumbling in the not so distant skies, I am acutely aware that this is not escapism in the slightest. In fact, this is me, facing the world and myself head on. It’s different than the world of paychecks, overtime, boyfriends, appointments, and OKCupid, but smelling the rain, the trees, the nasty poopy chickens…that’s real life, my friends. This is our world. I think I’ll get to know it.
