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‘It’s one of those things.’

‘Yeah.’

We sat in silence for a few moments, watching the countryside slowly slide past and listening to the clip-clop of the horse’s hooves.

‘We had a lot of rain lately,’ said Mervin, ‘and we got water across the road here.’ He explained how you get the horse to cross a deep puddle. ‘If she runs, that’s fine; but if she wants to walk, let her walk.’ It seemed like a good approach and the horse took us through the water.

Next we took a spin around the fields, a vast, flat landscape with little protection from the elements. Winters here are long and hard, but Mervin said they were bearable and I could understand why. Sitting behind a horse clip-clopping down the road was a lovely way to travel, and I seemed to have got the hang of it.

‘It’s not hard at all,’ repeated Mervin.

‘It’s very nice. I would love to go into town like this.’

We both cackled.

‘And when you’re young and single,’ I said, ‘is this how you go out with your young lady?’

‘Yeah, we can. They get those gatherings and then they’ll sometimes end up taking the lady home and getting acquainted and so forth.’

‘Is that allowed? Are you allowed to be alone with your girlfriend? Or do you need a chaperone?’

‘It’s allowed.’

‘And do you do that thing here where you … Is it called rumspringa?’

‘Yeah, they call it rumspringa.’

Rumspringa literally means ‘running around’, which is an apt description. It’s the period between the ages of sixteen and eighteen when adolescent Amish kids decide between being baptised and officially joining the Amish Church or leaving the community. It’s also when they look for a spouse. It’s a rite of passage, and maybe a time for sowing a few wild oats. Some Amish communities allow their young men to purchase small ‘courting buggies’, while some families paint their yard gate blue to indicate that a daughter of marriageable age lives there.

It seems a very sensible system to me. By recognising that adolescents need to rebel and defy their parents, it allows a degree of misbehaviour to be tolerated. Some of the kids turn their backs on Amish practices, wearing non-traditional clothing and styling their hair differently (they call it ‘dressing English’), driving vehicles, drinking or taking drugs and engaging in pre-marital sex. Up to half of them may temporarily leave the community or eschew the traditional practices, but almost all eventually return and choose to join the Church.

I told Mervin I thought the rumspringa was a very sane thing to do.

‘Yeah, but there’s some things that go on that I don’t really like or … ’

‘That you don’t approve of?’

‘Some of the kids get carried away.’

‘Of course.’

‘And people’s people, you know? People’s people.’

‘Do people get disappointed if the youngsters don’t come back?’

‘Some do. That varies from family to family. It might be more disappointing to one person than it is to another.’

‘It all seems very basic and understandable to me.’

‘Well, we just try to be simple, you know? A lot of them get it out of their system and then … ’

‘Settle down?’

‘Yeah. We’re all humans, just like the rest of them.’

I like that attitude. There’s something very accepting – and very Scottish – about it.

I was intrigued how Mervin met his own wife, so asked: ‘How would an Amish guy find an Amish wife?’

‘Well, a lot of them have activities going on. Or, like what I did, I met her, my wife, at a certain place and got acquainted. Then we started dating each other. I’d take her places.’

‘Did you meet in a sort of community thing, a dance or a get-together or something like that?’

‘I was probably where I shouldn’t have been.’

That made me laugh.

Mervin told me that the various Amish communities across America all have the same basic rules, but with some variations, according to geography. ‘You know, because you live in a certain circumstance, a certain rule doesn’t work.’ A few are allowed to have mobile phones or to fly on aeroplanes because they are considered necessities. Occasionally, Mervin will take a train into Chicago for business purposes, but in his community