When community surprises you

This weekend, a neighbor invited my family to a pumpkin waffle breakfast. I live in a fairly rural part of New Hampshire, and down the [dirt] road, there are a hundred-or-so acres of field and forest affiliated with our local university, utilized by students studying agriculture, environmental science, and stuff like that. A caretaker lives on site in a yurt (and sometimes students occupy a few neighboring yurts). There are beehives. There are goats that keep the fields from being overrun with brambles. There are gardens and orchards. The caretaker of this utterly bucolic bit of land sends out occasional emails inviting community members to tap the maple trees, help jar the honey, pick apples, harvest garlic, listen to the song of migrating birds, and kayak through tidal marshes.

Despite having received these emails for at least a year, the pumpkin waffle breakfast was the first event I’d attended, and it was . . . magical?