Heathcote Winter Retreat

This weekend is Heathcote Community’s quarterly retreat. We also have weekly business meetings and frequent “feelings meetings” we call teas. But several times a year we gather to do more extended work. So this weekend we’ll be all together, sharing meals, doing yoga and bonding activities, deeply listening, baring our souls  and consensing on our Strategic Plan. To make things even cozier, twenty-four inches of snow are expected! The flakes have been falling for a while as I write. The new accumulation will be added to our leftover two inches that has just been hanging around. There’s talk of firing up the cob hottub during the blizzard.

Normally I can be counted on to whine, bitch and moan about winter generally and even snow. I have a running joke with the kids that no one is allowed to sing Jingle Bells because I’m convinced that calls the snow. So, of course, they love to sing it loudly whenever I remind them. And, interestingly, it does usually snow soon after…I am a powerful witch!

But I don’t think I’ll complain too lingeringly over this particular blizzard because I have a new (three year-old) pellet stove to keep me warm! My old stove was ready to go. And it was never really powerful enough to heat my cabin. So I bundled up and spent all winter haunched in front of it, whimpering. When we installed this newish, larger one, I set it to ninety degrees and did my dance of joy. I’m also loving it because it automatically lights itself and turns itself off and on, to hold my temperature setting. Fancy!

Okay. It can snow this one time.

These photos are from our last retreat, during which we all (humans and dogs, not cats) hiked to our old friend, Grandmother Tree, who had recently fallen. It was possibly the oldest tree on our land and a regular meditation destination for community members. So it was magical to come together there to bid her goodbye.

Now you might be asking yourself, “Where do people who run a conference center go to retreat?” I have asked myself some variation of that very thing for fourteen years. I have reminded my community mates that the very definition of the word implies vacating the space we normally occupy. My online dictionary would seem to back up my theory:

re⋅treat

/rɪˈtrit/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [ri-treet] Show IPA

–noun

1.	the forced or strategic withdrawal of an army or an armed force before an enemy, or the withdrawing of a naval force from action.

2.	the act of withdrawing, as into safety or privacy; retirement; seclusion.

3.	a place of refuge, seclusion, or privacy: The library was his retreat.

4.	an asylum, as for the insane.

5.	a retirement or a period of retirement for religious exercises and meditation.

6.	Military. a. a flag-lowering ceremony held at sunset on a military post. b. the bugle call or drumbeat played at this ceremony.

Hmm. Number four gives one pause. Still, most of our retreats occur on the same battlefield we hold 365 days a year. I don’t harp on this to complain. When we live in paradise, why leave? Why rent when we own? I get it. Of course, there are many paradises besides ours. One year we did all go tent camping together at Pine Furnace State Park. But mostly I just like to rag on Heathcote for having a retreats without retreating to anywhere.

What else could we call it, our quarterly endless meeting? Our quarterly pajama party…quarterly advance! Yeah! Advance!

–WT

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