The following reflection was written by Dr. Gretchen Teague about the First Annual Ozarks Writing Project Fall Writing Retreat held at Bennett Springs State Park on Sept. 18-20, 2015.
September 29, 2015 7:45 A.M. Back Home in Springfield, MO
Remembering Fire and Water
Thinking back, it is hard to imagine the first annual OWP Writer’s Retreat at Bennett Springs was only a little over a week ago. The weekend began with on Friday, September 18, three hardy souls met to share dinner, conversation, and writing. It was a relaxing evening spent companionably around the campfire. Our folding chairs became our office, our notebooks our desk, and the blazing fire our light source. The raucous laughter gave way to the muted scratching of pens to paper, voices sharing writing, and the murmured “thank you for sharing.” The shared experience of writing around the fire brought similar memories to our minds of other campfires. This moment is now memory fodder for future reflective writing fires.
The morning dawned, burning as brightly as our campfire the night before. Coffee and conversation over a breakfast in the camp dining hall; nourishment before the writing frenzy of the marathon. By 10 a.m., we had met up with five more writers and began our writing marathon. The journey of the two groups of writers diverged and merged throughout the day; paths crossing momentarily filled with excited chatter of all the places we had found solitude and activity. The topography of our writing expedition took us to the peaceful cliff top of Vespers Point overlooking the river below and surrounded by protective hawks circling above. We ventured through the paths of the park, avoiding snakes, gnats, and fisher folk, to the spring itself. Although we left the water running through Bennett Springs Park often, we all felt the strong pull to come back. A cleansing of spirit and writing next to the river.
By evening, we felt refreshed and renewed, just as the weekend promised. A collection of participants from the 2015 Summer Institute joined the ranks for an evening meal, a celebration of classroom experiments, a share-around of writing, and camaraderie. The fire blazed in us once again as we were thrilled by the successes of our friends and challenged to make ourselves better teachers, humans, and friends. The supportive “thank you for sharing” flowed gently down the table, mimicking the river behind our backs, serving as a reminder of the power of words written, spoken, shared.
We left the gathering of old and new friends ready to take on the everyday life struggles with a little more compassion and understanding, feeling supported and supporting, relaxed, refreshed, and renewed. As we parted ways, the rustling of the leaves echoed “thank you for sharing.”