Sunday at Vashon

Potting shed at Lavender Farm

I arrived here on Wednesday afternoon, after a harrowing trip from Bellingham south through Seattle's awful traffic, with Siri as my only companion in the rented car I was driving. I couldn't have made it more than a few miles past Everett without my trusty phone talking to me. If only she knew how to make me calm down and stop gripping the steering wheel tightly every time a huge monster truck roared past. Eventually I made it to the ferry that would take me to Vashon Island and the others who were waiting for me to arrive on the island. And then the ordeal was over: I joined my familiar fellow writers for the beginning of our five-day writing retreat.

And already it's almost over. Our last full day before heading back to our respective homes, and I've been filled with many new avenues to pursue with my writing, although I've also been here before: ready to tackle whatever seems to be calling me, and then... nothing. Just falling back into the comfortable routine I've created for myself in Bellingham. Writing on my blogs, taking pictures, hiking with the Trailblazers on Thursdays, riding the bus to the Y for my daily workouts. And before long, only a slight sense of guilt remains about all those plans I had made to change things up.

This is our last year, in this format at least. We have shrunk over the five years from six to four, and although last year we resisted adding another person to our group, now it seems that we have accomplished all we set out to do as a group. We didn't start as a writing circle that first year, but met as fellow bloggers, who were approached by Linda, the person responsible for this happening. She researched online and found a place with six bedrooms that we could afford. And on Vashon Island, at that! Sally lives in Colorado, with a necessary plane trip to get here, and she was the first to drop out. Then this year Linda decided that she needed to make a change in her life, so she opted not to come either. For one thing, that meant I would have to drive myself here, as I had always carpooled with Linda from her home in Brier. Sandi and Deb live near each other (although in different towns) and have traveled here together every year. Jann lives in a small town in Oregon and has made the five-hour journey herself, except for the initial first year when she, Linda, and I carpooled together and picked up Sally at the airport on our way to the ferry.

As the years have passed, many of us have changed our ideas of what we want to do with our time here. We changed from three days to five, and instead of just gathering for the fun of it, we decided three years ago to have Deb, a facilitator trained in the Amherst Writers and Artists Method, direct our time together doing creative writing. One year, we invited Linda Reeder, who lives in Seattle, to spend an evening with us, and for that one time we were seven. It's been an interesting and rewarding journey.

I had never before experienced such a way of writing. All of it in longhand and not on our laptops, and being given a prompt by Deb, which we could use in whatever way we chose, for a set period of time, varying from five minutes to twenty. Then we shared our writing with the others and received positive feedback, what we liked, what worked for us, how we felt about the piece, always positive. It's a magical way to learn how to stretch one's writing muscles, I've found. Everything written is treated as though it is fiction, although many times we are writing about ourselves and our lives. I highly recommend this method and will, if nothing else, look for other ways to grow in my writing life.

That's what I've learned, but the most important lesson of all: who these wonderful women are, having laughed and cried together, and explored some of the most vulnerable corridors in our hearts and minds with one another. I will miss these October gatherings.

Learning to let go and let change come into my life, that's one of the hardest things I must allow myself to experience at this crossroad. I'm five years older now, but I see that the essence of who we are has not changed. Some of us have grown stronger in writing, and others have continued to develop already strong writing skills, but we have all grown closer to each other.

I'm the only one of us who continues to blog on a regular basis, and I have learned from them that there are plenty of other avenues for writing that I might explore. The desire to write fiction has emerged even stronger this year, and together we explored some avenues I might use to develop that desire further. I hope I do it, but I'm also learning that I cannot continue to "push the river" and must learn to allow life to shape me in its own way. We'll see where this all goes.

So, on this dark morning, without my partner, without my familiar surroundings, I feel happy to be here, but also happy to think about going home to my love and to my own life. I hope that this week will find you also happy to be carried along with the universal forces that guide us in ways we cannot even begin to understand. Be well until we meet again next week, dear readers.

Deb, Linda, me, Sally, Sandi, Jann
Five years ago