Inaugural Retreat

I am wonderfully pleased to report that our inaugural EM camping retreat last weekend was a great success. While our number of attendees continued to be in flux right up until the start of the retreat, we ended up having 6 people (plus one dog friend) join us for the weekend and 1 additional person join us just for the day on Saturday, for a total of 9 of us all together (10 if you count our dog friend Willow; 11 if you count our cat Larch). 

We offered three meals as part of the retreat: breakfast on Sat & Sun morning and dinner on Saturday. Folks were asked to bring their own lunches. As an extra treat, we were able to offer huckleberries as part of the breakfast spread on both mornings that Mike & I picked just up the road. 

While I’ve organized and helped to organize a number of other retreats over the years, this retreat had a special feel & quality to it, as it was our first - of what we hope will be many - retreats here at Empty Mountain. In the days leading up to the retreat, part of me starting questioning if we bit off a little more than we could chew. That perhaps my enthusiasm for wanting to delve right into offering program events, whilst in the midst of building and figuring out our off-grid living systems, was a little too ambitious. But I’m so very glad that despite our being a work in slow progress here at EM and having loads to do, we managed to offer this lovely retreat. Ultimately, this is a big part of why we’re doing what we’re doing. We bought this land and are choosing to live a different way of life so that we can build community, host events & retreats such as this and be a place of refuge, support, & nourishment for folks. As I keep saying: we’re starting where we’re at and doing what we can. 

I’m a big proponent & practitioner of not waiting for some future moment to do the thing. Whether “the thing” is gathering loved ones for a meal or taking a trip to see a close friend or sharing ones’s art with the world or hosting a retreat in the woods. The list goes on & on. Time is precious and life is short. There’s also no guarantee of a later moment to do whatever it is you feel inspired & called to do. So when inspiration stirs, the encouragement I give to myself is: Do the thing.  

So we did the thing and had a retreat and I’m beyond grateful that we did. Folks seemed to enjoy themselves and we even got to try out a couple of new program activities that have been percolating in me for a while. On Sat & Sun mornings, there was an optional offering that I called movement to music (which was based on a group I used to attend in Missoula called reflective morning movement). It was an optional opportunity to come together in a no talking space for self-led movement/stretching before our sitting meditation session, while chill instrumental music played in the background. I really enjoyed this practice. Each of us simply did our own movement thing. For me, it was a lovely chance to connect with others in the spirit of community togetherness while also having the freedom of not needing to talk. 

The second new activity that we tried out is in need of a better name, but I called it quiet group togetherness time. This was a gathering after the rest period after lunch and involved all of us coming together, again in a non talking space, with our own self-led activity. In the long logistical email we sent out ahead of time to everyone attending, for this part of our program, we encouraged folks to bring along things like: a book to read; a craft project; drawing supplies; or their journal. We also provided coloring books, a few mags, and a few fun books for folks to make use of. 

We also experimented with having partial noble silence mixed with periods of social unstructured hang-out time, which personally I felt went very well. Noble silence started after our opening circle on Friday evening and extended through Saturday until 4:00pm. We had a social dinner on Saturday and played a few rounds of an outdoor game we have & enjoy called kube. We even had the luxury of having a small campfire on Saturday night. 

We then re-entered noble silence on Sunday morning. After breakfast on Sunday, we led everyone in outdoor walking meditation to a nearby spot we call the cedar grove trail, which travels alongside a small creek. It was there in the cedar grove that we held a happiness meeting circle. Noble silence ended after the happiness meeting, so our walk back to EM was social, as was our lunch together, which was the concluding activity of our retreat weekend. 

We had really nice weather, no smoke from the local wildfires, and we even arranged a meteor shower on Saturday night. We had chilly nights & mornings and warm sunny days. And the coyotes gave us a chorus song too. It was a truly splendid time of intentional living & being wonderfully together in community; sharing quietude & space; showing up for & with one another, in the spirit of siblinghood.