I have a “writer family” and for a number of years, several of us went on yearly writing retreats together. Destinations were varied and the trips, usually in February or April were interesting, fun and productive. Our favorite retreat spot was the Olympia Resort in Oconomowoc. (I exchanged locations of one of the two time-shares I owned with my friend Fay for weeks all over the United States. The other was saved for my writing retreats.) In the back of the hotel, supposedly from scooped-up landfill, was a ski run. We could experience the younger local population dressed in bright colors skiing down the whiteness under flood lights, laughing and yelling at each other; it was like observing skaters in Rockefeller Center and fun to watch.
In 2003, we once again went to Olympia. It was easy to get into the resort in spite of the skiing mecca. We usually arrived individually, driving or riding with a pal or discombobulated husband who was surly from having to be quasi-wife and mother for a week. The condos contained three bedrooms and a sofa bed——twin beds in the other two bedrooms while the master always had a kingsize bed and its own bathroom. We could accommodate five comfortably and if another came, there was the fall-back sofa.
This year, 2003, had record snowfall—it had blizzarded hard for the past couple of days. We were able to get there because it was only 45 miles from home, although that 45 miles was hair-raising. The skiers were out in their colorful ski duds and melodic as usual.
Alice and I were editors of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets (WFOP) calendar for 2004, and we had fellowship work to do as well as our own writing. She came with the box of over a thousand poems, all indexed and put into divided folders. She had been the mail-in point and had the work of separating the poems into basics: months and rated one, two, or three with three being No. I was of little help during this early process as that was the year my son Jason died. I hoped being with friends and having a project would help me with my grief. Personally, I had a head full of squirrels and needed to have some real downtime. We had to get the original 1118 down to about 125 poems. It was up to us to judge the merits of the poems and whether they fit the criteria of the year. Hard work with so many good pieces to look at.
We loved the retreat weeks. We got up when we pleased, ate breakfast, worked on poems and padded around in our slippers and robes until around eleven. After getting dressed, combed and brushed, we got together to read our work and write from prompts to start new poems. After lunch, we worked on our own until four o’clock when we met as a group and shared our work. Then it was always out to eat somewhere, but with the snow storm that year, we couldn’t go far. We slid on the wintery road down to Stoltzies, about a block from the resort. As the week went on we were able to go into one of the nearby cities and have our choice of cuisine–we had our choice of Mexican, Italian or Chinese in the surrounding towns.
The last night we decided to go into Oconomowoc, and drove around the resort trying to find a way to get out with all the cars and snow. There was a Winter Carnival going on and the narrow service road was clogged with cars and trucks on both sides. We got about fifty yards from freeing ourselves and stopped! A jam of vehicles ahead blocked our way. I began to backup, andthe car incident happened—we backed into the rear end of a large truck. We got out and appraised the damage. My car had a broken tail light but the truck had a small nipple-type dent and scratch. There didn’t seem to be anything we could do, so I left a note on the truck’s wiper blade telling them I was sorry and leaving my name and phone number. The rest of the evening and for a week or two after, I jumped every time the phone rang, thinking I would be arrested for leaving the scene of an accident. No one ever called—apparently the owner of the truck either couldn’t find the ding or felt following up was too much trouble. Who knows?
The week ended, we loaded our cars, inventoried all the knives and forks , etc., and bundled back into our cars and returned to reality. But we were carrying poem-starts, half-done books and 100 plus people to notify that their poems had been accepted. I offered to do the computer work of typing up the poems for the publisher, and we left our condo to the next group of wayfarers.
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