When I was a kid, my younger sister was really into horses. I’m pretty sure many elementary-to-middle school-aged girls go through a horse phase. One summer, my parents signed us both up for a horse camp at a farm nearby, Wildfire Farms. My sister was ecstatic. I didn’t have any say.
Wildfire Farms was run by an old hippie. The summer “camp” didn’t have much of an agenda. My sister and one of the other girls stayed in the barn all day petting and grooming the horses. I somehow got relegated to digging a pit in the back where the hippie lady wanted to build a teepee. The dirt was rocky, so while I was sweating and swinging a pickaxe, my sister was in the shade having the time of her life with the horses.
At lunchtime, the lady took us into the house and fed us cheese sandwiches. She shared the house with a few alpacas. The alpacas smelled like piss. I remember being horrified when one wandered into the living room and snorted and spit at me while I was sitting on a hair-encrusted recliner, trying to eat my cheese sandwich.