The Aerie
Well, I'm back from my sort-of-kinda vacation.
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The story is that my wife sold a contract for a children's book. She
decided to use the check to do something that she had always wanted to
do: take a week away at a retreat in order to write. And, being
generous, she wanted to give me the chance to do the same thing (petty
persons might suggest that a quid pro quo was involved, but I
strenuously deny such suggestions). So I, too, received a week away at
a retreat in order to write. She went one week, leaving me with a
business and kids, and I went the next week, leaving her with her day
to day routine, less me.
The place we went to was called [1]Clare's Well. It's basically a
hobby farm run by some Franciscan nuns. It's a pleasant place, but it
was extremely disorienting for me, a type-A personality and atheist.
It offers "hermitages" to people for $50 a night, including meals.
Hard to beat!
The "hermitages" are clean, well-kept little buildings, with
electricity and baseboard heat but no running water. There was an
outhouse very near my hermitage, but it was rather oddly built into a
sharp slope. This meant that the breeze hitting the back of the
outhouse actually blew in through the bottom and came up through the
seat. There are a lot of reasons why wind should not blow up through
the seat of an outhouse, but I won't explore them any further. Suffice
to say I did not use it any more often than I had to. (On the other
hand, why WOULD anyone use any outhouse more often than they had to?)
My hermitage (I didn't get to inspect the others) was spartan by
vacation standards, but luxurious by college dorm standards. It had a
kitchen area to the right of the door, a woodburning stove, a desk, a
bed with trundle, a loft with a futon, and a closet for clothes that
also contained a large plastic thing that turned out to be a modern
chamber pot.
In the fridge were only a small amount of olive oil, a mostly-empty
jar of peanut butter, and another jar of granola. That's not to say
there should have been more in there, but it seemed weird to run the
thing just for those items. Otherwise the kitchen included several
packages of tea, oatmeal, and popcorn, so I was never short on snacks
although variety was naturally limited.
Beside the creaky bed was a tiny night stand holding an antidiluvian
bedside clock. This thing was so old that the white glow-in-the-dark
coating on the hands had turned brown -- the same brown of the clock
face. Therefore it had the odd characteristic of being a clock that
you can read in the dark at night, but not in daylight.
Having settled in I went to lunch at the main house, which meal turned
out to be in its execution (if not in its content) very much like
every other meal. We all introduced ourselves if new persons were
present, and everyone spoke very quitely and nicely. The nuns were all
very nice and the guests were nice too, and everything was so very
nice that I just about wanted to scream. But I contained myself and
maintained propriety as best I could, despite several provocations.
One of the nuns announced in the midst of a conversation "Well that's
why I'm against abortion..." I refrained from piping up with a
reply... It seemed rude to come out as a pro-choice atheist while a
guest in their home, even though I was actually not a guest. But it
was their home. Things were blurry.
The meals were all delicious, home made food, and there was always
plenty, with the staff urging brownies and bars on me to quell any
late night hunger. The water was astonishingly bad. I grew up (in
part) on a lake in outstate Minnesota, and I know from rusty, mineral
filled water. This had my teenage water beat by a mile. During the
week they mentioned that they had had a new well dug after the last
one froze the year before.
"How is the water now as compared to the old well?" I asked, wondering
if maybe they'd hit a rusty patch in the aquafer.
"Oh, it's much less rusty than it was."
I think my eyebrows must have flown off my head like those of a
cartoon character... MORE rusty? The stuff had the consistency of
syrup as it was!
Aside from the meals and the nature of the room, there's not a lot
else to say. I did get a massage, but I found it somewhat lackluster,
due in no small part to the fact that it's been so long since I worked
out that my muscles had little to gain from the experience, being soft
and putty like.
I spent the week writing, and the time rocketed past at supersonic
speed. Every day seemed to be about two hours long. I would wake, eat
some oatmeal for breakfast in my cabin, write til noon, eat lunch,
write, eat dinner, write and go to sleep. Zoom. Zap. Before I knew it
my week was up! I didn't get everything done that I'd wanted to, as
regards the writing, but I didn't waste any time (I'd deleted every
game from my computer before leaving), so I can't complain.
The final night I forced myself to relax a bit -- particulary because
it was clear I wasn't going to make my big writing goal of finishing
the book I'm working on. I went for a walk around the pond, took a hot
tub bath, etc. But Friday morning, I was ready to go home, and I left
before lunch instead of sitting through one more breathlessly pleasant
meal.
I'm not complaining -- almost every problem I had with the place (and
they were few) were problems I brought in with me -- but it was a
relief to get away from the concentrated niceness and intense
pleasantness of the experience, and back to the stress inducing whirl
of mind-numbing annoyances that the Real World has to offer.
About the only thing I can ACTUALLY complain about would be the noise.
I know I tend to associate rural farms with quiet, well no such luck.
The Guinea hens waddling around the place each make a noise like a
bicycle with a bad wheel. The cows in the neighboring pasture (20 feet
from my cabin) could eruct a MOO at any time, day or night, including
3 a.m. And the DOGS, the DOGS within five minles had this "101
Dalmations" midnight bark going on! If I didn't get to sleep by
midnight, I didn't get to sleep until 2:30 a.m. Barking here, barking
there, barking nearby, barking in the distance. Who ever knew dogs had
so much to say to one another?
"Rowr! Hey guys, what's up?"
"Rowr rowr! Not much! Rolled in a dead fish today!"
"Rowrf! Tell us more"
"Rarp! Tell us all about it, in detail!"
"Rowr rowr! Well, to start with it was maggoty!"
"Rowrf!" "Rarp" "Rowr!"...
Aside from that, it was a very nice, pleasant experience. And an odd
way to burn a week really quickly.
But now I'm back, and doubtless in a week I'll wish I had never left!
[2]Last
Posted by Albatross at May 28, 2003 12:00 AM