Hot Springs

It’s the last full day of our writing retreat and we had a field trip to the hot springs. We hopped from pool to pool, already sharing so much of our souls over the last few days, that no one seemed uncomfortable in their swim suit, not even me.

It was a soft reintroduction to the outside world, the non-real world as it was referred to. There was more chatter than I have been exposed to for the last several days. We have been in and out of silence and conscious conversation. There was smoke from intentional fires, that I could smell. I wondered if this was preparing me to go home where the smoke from the fires have clouded the beautiful bay.

There was the pool where we helped him float. Three of us around him, me holding him up, she was touching his head, and she was rubbing his feet. Giving back some loving touch. Before this he had moved her body just so, pulled to help stretch her back. She surrendered her body to these movements, all eyes on their dance in the water. I heard and older woman lean into her husband’s ear and ask, Are they doing something sexual? I smiled and laughed a little. We are so quick to conflate intimacy with sex.

I laid in a hammock and just stared at the stars. There is a sadness in the ending. No more retreat, no more hammock, not more group writing in this way… But there is also a joy in the completion. We have truly done something phenomenal, just by being here with each other to write into and share our stories. And we get to choose what we take with us; what new tools, insights, memories, movements. We get to find home in us and take it to where we live.