A Year in the Woods – Day One

It’s my first day on the job.  At this job I live and work at an interspiritual retreat center housed in the middle of a white pine forest. Home is a cedar log lodge, my room on the third floor an a-frame directly over the kitchen. Our other buildings are a one-bedroom cottage and a single-person hermitage.

I start my morning by dressing for coffee and heading downstairs. Didn’t want to show up in pj’s with Ed on the job. Today is also Ed’s first day. An injured garbage hauler from a local town, Ed is here at ARC on light duty assignment. When I come downstairs, I find this strapping fellow with his big hands is currently folding napkins and making place settings, a delicate task for one so strong.

After breakfast we have check-in, our brief morning meeting to scope out the day.

Today’s cast of characters includes Suzanne, our fearless leader, a gifted visionary who brought the retreat center back from the brink and is deftly shepherding it through COVID. Suzanne is limping from a burn on her foot caused by spilling hot water when the water heater was out, and they were heating and carrying water for dishes. 

Saintanne is with us volunteering for a couple of days. She’s originally from Haiti, so has the lilting island accent, and has grown up in the States. She’s sweet. She’s capable. And she’s fast. 

Debra, like me, is new. She’s a live-in volunteer. Working four days a week for free and dedicating her wages from the fifth day to a scholarship fund for BIPOC people working for social justice. She’s the cleaning queen, ready, willing, and able to get to the bottom of any mess.

My first morning task is to work on the Book Nook, our book and gift shop, pricing and displaying our new books. We’ve recently decided to expand our repertoire to include a more diverse collection. I’m a bibliophile, otherwise known as a bookaholic, so I’m like a kid in a candy store. I’m so excited. 

I head to the kitchen and notice our current hermit looking for someone. I step out to greet him. This is his second time here, and his wife will take her turn in a couple of weeks. He’s so grateful and wants to say “thank you” before he leaves. He talks about the stress of working and having kids at home all the time during this time of COVID. He tells me: “Both times I’ve been here, when they bring the first food basket, I’ve broken down and cried.”

Next up, I’m on kitchen duty. I get to put out two meals today. For lunch we are serving ARC rice and beans, carrot ginger salad and an assortment of cookies, paired with cherry/berry tea. Saintanne and I manage to pull this off, but not without some unexpected help from Ed, who steps up to teach us how to peel ginger with a spoon, a talent I wouldn’t have expected from my neighborhood trash hauler. Just goes to show you how stereotypes could be misleading. He also helps us open a container that has unintentionally become vacuum-sealed, calling for a butter knife to do the job after we have just broken off one of the container’s handles in the attempt.

This is not news to experienced cooks, but I remember to taste the food before serving. We have added extra carrots to stretch the salad, so it’s tasting a bit dry. St. Anne and I decide to add some orange juice, which helps. In retrospect, we could have added some more salt as well. But we are learning.

I receive my day’s lesson in humility. I am feeling good, truth be told, a little cocky about my ability to coordinate and put out a meal, on time, with relatively little stress. I pull our beans and rice out of the oven and insert the food thermometer to make sure we don’t poison our guests. I wonder out loud why the dial is moving so slowly.  Ed steps in, quickly pulls the thermometer out of the food, and deftly removes its cover, which I have unwittingly left on. So much for feeling cocky. And, who is this guy, anyway? Turns out his wife runs a kitchen, and he does a lot of cooking at home. I wonder what other hidden (to me) talents he may have.

Lunch is ready, and we need someone to run a meal to the cottage.

Back in the lodge our group of 12 includes a pre-verbal toddler; it gives me great joy to serve his food on little plates and bowls. His dishes look so tiny and tender in our industrial kitchen.

Due to COVID, prayer tradition of reading from prayer cards has diminished, but this group says its own prayer.

After lunch, in an enduring ARC tradition, we share a lunch reading with the guests. Suzanne reads from Wayne Muller’s Sabbath, and one quote stands out: “If busyness can become a kind of violence, we do not have to stretch our perception very far to see that Sabbath time – effortless, nourishing rest – can invite a healing of this violence. When we consecrate a time to listen to the still, small voices, we remember the root of inner wisdom that makes work fruitful. We remember from where we are most deeply nourished and see more clearly the shape and texture of the people and things before us.” 
― Wayne Muller, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives

Kitchen cleanup is in good hands, so I venture back to work on my books, then take a break outside in my folding chair in view of the garden, the woodshed, and the beast, our fond name for our outdoor woodstove with which we heat the lodge in winter. I have brought my chair to encourage me to sit down and take a load off, my own mini-sabbath. I have come a long way since my first radical act of giving myself permission to take a 15-minute coffee break every afternoon when I had two toddlers, but I still have deep tendencies toward overwork.

I go back indoors and start to work on dinner, beginning by pulling our homemade bread from the freezer.

Dinner tonight is my favorite—sweet potato coconut soup. We need a green salad, and our only dressing is a bottled one, so I venture to make one, my first homemade dressing for a crowd. I choose a tool I understand—the old-school blender rather than the newfangled Ninja.  French dressing—who knew it took so much catsup? Again St. Anne helps me taste. I am not used to doing this, focusing fully on my taste buds to ask—how is this? What is good? What is missing? St. Anne declares it’s a little tangy, and a little too thick. We add a bit of water and some sugar, and voila it is fit to serve, along with our soup and four baby loaves of wild rice bread. 

Saintanne prepares beautiful individual green salads—spring mix, green pepper, grape tomatoes. This reminds me of the scene in Nacho Libre where Jack Black earns money by wrestling and is able to give the orphans he lives with a reprieve from their gruel. In a scene that first brought me to tears, he lovingly offers individual salads to each of the orphans he adores.

Folks are done eating, and we serve tea and brownies. Debra’s back in the mix, having spent the entire day cleaning a carpet and other furniture in the community room. She serves Sleepytime Tea with a gentle smile.

Back in the kitchen, dinner cleanup and kitchen shutdown take three people one and a half hours. At the end, I throw the kitchen linens in the laundry: the napkins, our well-worn aprons. It is 7:30 pm. I started at 9:30, but others, morning people, started before me at 6.

It has been a good first day. I lie in my cozy room over the kitchen, but it is hard to wind down. My back is sore, my feet are throbbing, and my mind is busy, thinking about tomorrow. But my heart—oh, my heart is so full.