Sunday Snippet: The Post-Retreat Musings Edition

I’m in a post-retreat haze. It happens every year after Liz and I get back from our semiannual (it means twice a year, I looked it up!) writing retreat. We do one in January in a little town in the hills of Southern Indiana and we do one in October, usually somewhere in Michigan.

At every retreat, we write and talk and eat and drink wine and write and process and talk endlessly and write… Oh, and did I mention that there’s always great wine and chocolate and lots of good food? (I think I might have, but it bears repeating.) We don’t do restaurants quite as much as we did at first because that takes time away from writing, and we sorta become little homebodies in whatever VRBO or Airbnb that we rent. We don’t cook, but a trip to the grocery store for essentials when we first land fills our fridge and larder with cheese and bread and fresh fruit and veggies, coffee, cream, cookies, good Irish butter, and yogurt. We’re set–breakfast and lunch for a week. Generally, we eat suppers out, but this trip we only ate out twice. Once night we ordered pizza. the next we warmed up leftovers, but otherwise we ate our groceries up on the balcony overlooking the water. We even commented on how little we ate out. We were simply too entrenched in writing… I think we nailed writing retreat this trip.

I confess, although I love our winter retreat to an inn, the trip to Michigan is where my heart takes flight. I’m born a Hoosier, but I think somewhere in a previous life or early in this one, I was a Michigander. Every year, I’m nervous and anticipatory until I see Lake Michigan. My first look at that vast water, whether it’s choppy with waves or shiny with the reflection of the sun brings a sense of peace that I never find anywhere else. And it doesn’t matter where my first sighting is–most often we stop in Benton Harbor for lunch before heading farther north along the Blue Star Highway. All I need is a glimpse and I’m home.

Liz and I have parsed my need for Lake Michigan more than once. I think most likely, it’s because that’s where I spent summers as an impressionable tween and teenager. Mom took us camping to Lake Michigan several times during the summers and I absorbed her love of the lake. I don’t think is has much to do with astrological sign since neither of us are Water signs–I am an Air and Mother was an Earth. I’m not sure it’s all that mystical. I think it’s merely a need to feel to power of the universe–not like you feel it in storms or other natural disasters–not that at all. Rather, how you feel it when you tramp through a forest of redwoods or walk along the ocean at Asilomar State Beach  and watch the tiny creatures among the rocks or stand on the deck of cabin in Blue Ridge Mountains and breathe in the piney air. All those places, I’ve been nearly brought to my knees at the wonder of our natural world and I loved being there.

In Michigan, standing on the beach with the cold water of Lake Michigan washing over my toes, the wonder is very real, too, but it’s the welcome home that’s different. There is that I’m finally home again that I feel nowhere else in the world. For Liz, that place is Vermont–we have this discussion every year and every year I think we need to go to Vermont next year for her. I know she loves Michigan and the drive is easy, but she deserves to have that wonder and magic and I’d love to see Vermont again. Hmmm…something to consider…

I’m closing with a question for you this week: Where in the world is your home place? Are you lucky enough to live there or is it a place you visit, soak in the welcome home, and then sigh as you drive away?

Gratitude this week: Lake Michigan; time with Liz; got enough words in to feel like I’ve got a good start on the new novel; lovely belated birthday party with my lake pals when I got home; I signed up to work the polls for the first time in almost twenty years. 

Stay well, stop to breathe in the crisp autumn air, always choose kindness, and most of all, mes, amis, stay grateful!