One year ago my husband gave me the gift of a week-long stay at Christ in the Wilderness in JoDaviess County, Illinois. Both my brother and my mom had done silent retreats there. The place is just a few miles from the family farms of both my mother’s parents. It is also where my mother grew up and where I lived for about 4 years of my childhood. I feel deeply connected to this beautiful part of Illinois, also known as the Driftless Area. Unlike much of the rest of the state, it is forested, with hills and bluffs and river valleys and rock formations. Yes, there are also farms with red barns and pastured cows and cornfields, but it feels decidedly different from most of the rest of Illinois which was scraped flat by glaciers.
When I arrived, the nun that runs the place hoisted my things into the back of her ATV and drove me through a meadow and then over a steep, washed out, rocky road into the woods until we saw the view you can see from this picture. I stood in the threshold of my little hermitage and tried to hold off crying until she was gone. It was such a gift to have all that uninterrupted time and solitude in such a beautiful place.
I was so eager for some uninterrupted time to focus on writing–to read, to write, to revise and to put together a chapbook manuscript. I organized my files, typed up poems I had in notebooks, assembled a draft of a manuscript on the twin bed. I read The Poet’s Companion and Ordinary Genius by Kim Addonizio and A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver as well as plenty of books of poetry I had brought along. In the between times, I cooked small meals for myself or took naps. I also spent a lot of time on the screen porch, watching wildlife parade by, lost in thought. I went for long walks in the woods. I filled a notebook that would have taken me months to fill at home. I was alone–more alone than I had maybe ever been in my life. Sometimes I even felt a little too alone and too isolated. One night when it stormed and I couldn’t go outside for my evening walk, I felt a surprising sense of cabin fever. I didn’t imagine that a week would feel so long! But a week in one place with no other people was quite a shock to my system after years of living with a husband and kids and a dog and a full time job. Also, I really wanted to leave the door unlocked and the windows open at night but I just couldn’t do it–I couldn’t shake my city sense that there was danger after dark. But overall, I felt so much peace and a very uncomplicated joy I hadn’t felt in many years.
It was not too long after this experience that I published my first poem. And then my second and third and fourth. This retreat was my chrysalis–I climbed in not knowing what to expect and I emerged a week later feeling quite changed. I’m so grateful for the experience.