Early summer snapshots
My yoga instructor always tells my class to “be in the moment”. I hope some day to get to the stage where my actions and breathing are fully coordinated, and my mind is totally focused on my yoga movements. It’s not easy to achieve. Too often I am thinking about it all instead of just being there.
But at least it has led to some interesting thoughts. We can’t control time. Minutes, hours, days go by at their own rate, not ours. But we can control the way we experience time. That’s why I try to be fully aware of what I do and what is going on around me. I particularly like moments that bring the Hamptons closer to me, and I make mental snapshots for myself. Here are a few of the early summer snapshots filed in memory.
I stopped at the Green Thumb one morning in late June, and filled a basket with produce. When I’m there I always buy much more than I need—it’s not an expensive indulgence, and besides, and all that beautiful organic produce is good for us. I had a large bunch of young carrots and another bunch of small round beets, and as I was paying, Peachy Halsey told me that this day was the first of the season’s harvest of carrots and beets. I don’t know why I was so thrilled. I remember thinking that since it was early I might even have been the first customer that day. It seemed ceremonial, another small landmark of my life in the Hamptons. And they were of course the best beets and carrots I’ve ever tasted.
Anticipating the start of Bridgehampton Polo and the Hampton Classic, and anxious to see some horses up close, I spent an afternoon with Dana Mazzola at Five Tails Farm. Dana is a young local woman who rides and trains horses for noted local equestrians like Kelly Klein, Stephanie Powers, and Geri Bauer. One of Dana’s skills is breaking young horses, teaching them to trust a rider, and getting them ready for show jumping. I roamed the lush green paddocks and the orchard of Five Tails, I strolled through the picture perfect stables looking at some magnificent horses, and I watched Dana gently and perfectly exercise a young horse. Horses and land and friends are all important to me, and everything around me seemed in its place.
One Sunday after yoga class I went for lunch to Hampton Chutney. It’s a small take-out place in Amagansett that serves light Indian style food—not all that curried stuff you get in low-priced New York restaurants. They prepare dosas—a sour-dough crepe with various fresh fillings, and brisk yogurt drinks and tantalizing watermelon juice. The food is worth the visit, but the garden in back makes it memorable. It happens to be the manicured display area of Bayberry Nursery. You sit at outdoor picnic tables surrounded by specimen trees that are probably worth more than your car or even your house, or you can sit in Adirondack chairs next to a beautiful pond with fish and waterlily pads. I like the deal: you get million dollar surroundings with a twelve-dollar lunch.
At the opening of Bridgehampton Polo I was talking with Adair Buetel, a dedicated rider, about my board work for this year’s Classic and about having just written two polo articles. She said that I ought to be riding. Later, at Paul Hilal’s party in Water Mill, I was talking about polo and show jumping with a young woman named Tracy whom I had just met. She has competed in important classes at important horse shows, and is clearly an excellent rider. She too said I ought to be riding. I was never very accomplished, and I doubt that I’ll take it up again, but I like the idea that a valued old friend and an interesting new friend both cared, and both expressed the same thought on a lovely equestrian afternoon in the Hamptons.