Bittersweet Winter Retreat
In Which I Vow to Remember the "Before Times"
[voice recording coming soon]
Last spring our community experimented with a spring residential silent retreat. It was so nourishing and unexpectedly joy-filled, Julia suggested a winter retreat to turn toward the seasonal inner and outer dark and cold many of us experience, so we penciled it onto the calendar. As long as I’ve lived in this region I’ve wanted to visit the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Chase County, KS. I decided to call it our “winter bittersweet retreat”. Little did we know just how pertinent this theme would be.
Upon the turning of the new year when we lost dear Cathan, I was reflecting on how much has changed through photos and memories of our time together. For many of us, the pandemic revealed a fault line that is still creating seismic shifts. We refer to experiences as before the pandemic and after the pandemic. Our relationships, ways of life, and plans for the future were tilted, upended, or in some cases, completely shattered. It's poignant to realize that we never know when we might be living at the end of an era.
As I drove with the urban Kansas City skyline in my rearview mirror, the change in landscape was striking. Cityscape gave way to treeless fields, gave way to little hills covered in undisturbed snow. These curious flat topped hills looked a little like melted marshmallows to me.
The transition from urban to rural always reminds me that politically, we really live in two countries. One that has an average of 400+ acres between neighbors and counts on nobody but ourselves if say, the power goes out in the night and it’s 14 degrees, but feels like -3. The other is interconnected through a complicated grid of pipes, wires, vehicles, and thoroughfares, hears their neighbors through windows, walls and floors, or passes them in hallways or on walkways. Driving through these snow-covered expanses, I understand why we see things so differently sometimes.
I’ve been considering the likelihood that our country is nearing the end of another before-times. Soon enough we may be saying, “before the current administration”.
As I drove toward central Kansas, I was wondering what I was taking for granted that I might be looking back on wistfully. I wondered what new sort of future lay ahead. I vowed to take it all in as best I could. To be mindful is to remember and to remember is to learn.
As has become our tradition, at the beginning of our retreat we set our intentions, which this time around included welcoming in any amount of ease, connection, or clarity that may be available, and to allow ourselves to come as we are, and to feel what we feel. Yahne created a small altar for Cathan which we visited and honored throughout.
The first full day I ventured out to the Tallgrass Prairie on my own. It was bright, cold, and uncommonly still. The sky was a very light blue like the color of an aquamarine gemstone. At the welcome center the park ranger suggested the trail through the bison pastures to the highest point on the prairie. They said they maintain a herd of 85 bison.
I knew from a trip to Yellowstone that one should be cautious of bison, so I was a little nervous. The herd seemed always so far away on the horizon like little black dots. I enjoyed sensing the dormant vegetation, the tracks in the snow, the crunch of my own footsteps in the silence, and the feel of the sun on my face. A coyote stuck its head up like a periscope and eyed me from the hillside. I accidentally flushed a pheasant when I stopped to listen to a tiny chirping sound in the grass.
Then rounding a bend I suddenly found myself face to face with a bison bull. We both froze. How could this huge creature be so stealthy? I began walking slowly backward. The bull continued toward me on the trail and one… two… three… four other bison emerged behind it. Now that I understood they don’t necessarily stick together in a large herd, I began to worry I could be cut off from the gate and trapped in the pasture.
I focused on calmly putting as much distance between myself and the bison as possible - the park signs advised at least a football field’s length. When I felt safe enough I took a couple of nervous photos with my phone and mindfully hiked back the way I came.
I drove home during the golden hour which gilded the dormant grasses and turned the shadows of the snow a cornflower blue. Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony was playing on one of the few radio stations I could receive clearly and somehow it seemed just right.
When I returned to the retreat house my friends and I prepared and ate a hot meal together. We lingered at the table and laughed and talked about our concerns for the world and how we might be of benefit. Then we sat in a circle and made music and sang songs.
The next day was much the same except that we left for the prairie preserve later in the day and instead of a bull encounter we enjoyed a panoramic sunset immersion. We connected, touched the earth, turned toward the bitter, and savored the sweet. We came as we are and felt what we felt. It was a before time to remember. May it serve what emerges.
- Tracy
Paid subscribers can access a related video and another article with some more personal moments and musings. Why the paywall? Until we find better systems to sustain us, we hope there is some mutuality, reciprocity, relative safety, and agency over one’s privacy in this compromise.
Some upcoming opportunities to nourish and fortify yourself in community:
I’ve been attending Upaya Zen Center’s wonderful socially engaged practice program now in its third year. Today January 19th, 2025 at 1 pm central Jon Kabat-Zinn will explore the question and topic, “What Is Your/Our Karmic Assignment? Activist Embodied Dharma in the Face of the Full Catastrophe of the Human Condition and the Planetary Poly-Crisis.” Read more and register here.
There’s an annual Heartland Conservation Alliance Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Nature Walk and at 9 am - noon and keynote address tomorrow in my neck of the woods.
Tomorrow the 20th of Jan @ 6pm Central time Reggie Hubbard is offering a donation based Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Freedom Sit online
Dan Harris will be doing some free guided meditations during the week of the inauguration.
David Dean is offering a solidarity course for those concerned about the incoming administration that starts tomorrow providing “Online Training Series for the Course Ahead”. I have taken a number of courses through White Awake and found them very thought provoking.
Midwest Alliance for Mindfulness is hosting an on-site daylong Spring Renewal Retreat March 1st at Hollis Renewal Center.