Hermitage

3/8/2001

From Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary: "Hermitage: Any secluded place of residence or habitation; a retreat."

For Valentine's Day my husband gave me solitude. I had been feeling frustrated with my novel and needed to write a particularly difficult chapter about wildfire, so he suggested a writing retreat at Moosewillow.

We bought the place a year ago with the intention of restoring the homestead and converting it into a writing/painting studio for me, but since then we had filled it with family and friends, and I had never been there alone. I was nervous as I packed and kept forgetting things, which is unlike me. Steve and the girls drove up to Moosewillow with me, helped me get settled and left before lunch. And then it was just me, my novel, and my dog, Natasha, alone in the wilderness for five days.

The closest town is the small logging community of Olney, but since the sawmill closed, it's virtually a ghost town. Between Moosewillow and Olney there's nothing but overgrown lodgepole forest inhabited by moose, elk, white-tail deer, the occasional lynx and some hibernating bears. I do have neighbors--the sort of people who keep to themselves unless thereÕs a problem, and then theyÕre there for you unconditionally--but they were gone, so I was on my own.

I was scared and excited. I swept the floor, made coffee, ate lunch, unpacked my things. Natasha, who is a pampered six-year-old Doberman pinscher, curled up on the velvet couch in front of the fire (yes, there are comforts at Moosewillow) and went to sleep. My laptop and manuscript were sitting on my desk, and I was afraid to go near them. But by that evening I had re-written Chapter Six; it was still rough, but I was starting to get somewhere. And Natasha, also nervous about being alone, hadnÕt moved off the couch.

I awoke at four in the morning, edited twenty pages, and discovered it was six degrees outside, and the bathtub plumbing was frozen, so I couldn't take a bath. And it was snowing. By noon there were three inches of fresh snow, and my writing was going well. I took a break and went snowshoeing. The route I took, across the meadow, down to Potter Creek, and back around the meadow, took me into the forest. I looked for animal tracks, but saw only the marks left by a snowshoe hare. I stopped and rested and heard knocking.

I lifted my binoculars and spotted a three-toed woodpecker--a new species for me--up high in a lodgepole. Back in the cabin, I quieted my mind, heard what my novel had to say and wrote two new scenes. It stopped snowing. I went out on snowshoes again and saw pine grosbeaks and siskins and three kinds of nuthatch: white-breasted, red-breasted and pygmy. I went inside, made a simple supper, found my writing voice again and wrote until it was time for bed.

On the third day I fed the birds in a cold, clear dawn. I spoke with Steve and the girls and told them the bathtub was still frozen and Natasha still hadn't gotten off the couch, except to eat and relieve herself. Then I got to work. By early afternoon the ideas were coming, and the words were flowing, and the story was pouring out of me. The act of writing had become everything. Then my mouse died. Aaarrgh! I have an old laptop with an idiosyncratic mouse. I got so frustrated that I went snowshoeing and spent long moments watching the StellerÕs jays clowning at the feeder. One of them mimicked a red-tail hawk to scare me off, and I couldnÕt help laughing. I went back inside, fixed the mouse, and completed a preliminary draft of Chapter Seven--the wildfire chapter.

I dug deep and pushed hard on the fourth day, and when I thought I was too tired and could write no more, I wrote a thousand words more. I balanced the day with regular breaks for cross-country skiing. The bathtub plumbing thawed so I was able to take a bath, and Natasha finally got off the couch and accompanied me skiing. And when I was done, I had a hard time getting her to come indoors because she was enjoying herself so much.

On the last day I awoke to heavy snow. I polished Chapter Six and finished Chapter Seven. Two chapters may not sound like much, but my chapters are long--twenty to thirty pages each--and the wildfire chapter required the intricate weaving of story and technical detail. I went cross-country skiing in several inches of new snow that was as light as feathers. The silence was so deep all I could hear was the squeaking and shushing of my skis on the snow. Then I heard voices in the woods, a dog barking and a shotgun blast. Sound carries far at Moosewillow, so it was hard to tell how far away they were. I felt intruded on and proprietary about all this silence, and all at once knew how a hermit must feel.

Few human feelings run deeper than the need for solitude. In our overloaded, hectic lives, few of us have time to be alone. Far from being self-indulgent, a small amount of solitude at the right time can be a grounding, deeply spiritual experience. It is time as much as distance that distinguishes solitude. It is me standing still on snowshoes in the meadow for an hour, watching the jays. It is me at my desk, writing hours before dawn and late into the night, giving the work before me the best I have, reaching inside and bringing another world to life. And when I went back to my family, it was with love, gratitude and a sense of renewal.