Last evening I attended a small theater production on the grounds of what had once been a dairy farm and is now a location for modern dance and other events, owned by the late Ida Hahn, an “icon of the modern dance world.” The setting of Windhover, her Performing Arts Center that grew from a summer program for girls in the arts into a well-known center for modern dance and other mediums. After Ida Hahn’s death in 2016, her daughter, Lisa, has carried on the work.

I’m thinking about this now, despite many visits to Windhover over the years, because my companion and I both had the same thought. The scattering of small shingled buildings in a rocky pasture surrounded by woods and only a short walk from the ocean would be the perfect location for a writers’ retreat. The buildings are rustic, but their lights glow through the windows in the late summer evenings as artists and dancers wind down from the day. This is the time for creatives to get together to talk about their work and plans for the day.

The idea found a warm reception in both our minds, since we had both attended writers’ retreats in the past. My friend had experienced more than I have, but our feelings about them are the same. A good retreat lets the writer set aside the usual thoughts about managing life during the day and focus solely on work that too often gets shunted aside for more pressing, usually mundane matters.

In a short memoir about spending a week in a Provincetown dune shake, Thalassa (Haley’s, Athol MA, 2011), the author Allen Young describes his week in an isolated, rustic shack, his preparations and plans for coping and how he spent his days. I’ve long been intrigued by the dune shacks and the idea of spending a week in one, but the National Park Service recently announced that it was no longer going to allow this, and so memoirs like Young’s will be an historical record rather than a call to others for adventure. (The eight historic dune shacks are now being leased for a ten-year period, with the lessee responsible for all care and maintenance. I don’t know if subleasing is allowed; if it is, the dune shack experience may remain an option for others.)

Another writer invited to MacDowell went with his new, incomplete manuscript, eager to work and write what he assumed would be pages and pages every day. Instead, he found the hours alone with his WIP opening up doors he hadn’t expected, doors into rethinking his entire project and its direction. He shuffled pages, rewrote outlines, and although he would have felt this a poor use of his time at home he reported feeling he had come away with something fresh and new. I remember this story so well because he could have ignored the ideas and doubts taking form in the back of his mind and continued on with a perfectly acceptable story for an editor already interested in his work. 

We gain different things from a writer’s retreat. For some it’s the essential time to write. But for others it can be the opportunity to sit quietly with ourselves and listen to inchoate thoughts take form and gain clarity, leading us in a new more fruitful direction. And sometimes, it’s just the experience of being with like-minded people that can give us the energy we need to continue with a novel that is challenging. 

The season is ending in October for Windhover. The buildings lack central heat, so there’s no chance of gathering writers there this year. But I plan to write the director, Lisa, and invite her to consider adding this opportunity for writers to her schedule for the coming year or beyond. And I’ll continue to visit Windhover to enjoy other creative productions.