Time and Space: A Week in the Catskills

I am away from my beloved family for a week with a few women friends for our own mini-artist’s retreat in the Catskills. We have rented a magnificent old house with many bedrooms and an expansive stone porch with hammock, swing, a table where I sit writing. I am treating this space like my office – pausing to stretch, drink cups of tea, or watch the bees, butterflies and odd hummingbird feast on the flowers.  At home I hear the constant whirr of highway traffic but this week, the background noise is river flowing over rocks across the street, birds and the wind through the leaves.

I arrived yesterday after a two hour drive from Connecticut.  The road was familiar since we rented a house up here last year too.  The Catskills has the most reasonably priced rentals for big houses with lots of bedrooms. Last year there were about 10 of us at any given time, this year there will only be a few of us. For most of yesterday, I was here alone. Although I had a sense of expectation that felt weird as no one else showed up, I loved it. I moved from one side of the porch to the other, trying out the different chairs and the hammock. The hammock is very sweet.  I read and dozed, made a cup of tea, read then dozed again. Still, no one else arrived.  Finally, one friend called to tell me that two of them would not arrive until today. It was dark by the time Laura arrived – I was impressed by her navigation skills since I had doubted my ability to find the place during the day.

The house is perfect for many people but so far it is only Laura and I who share coffee, tea and wine and this time to rejuvenate our friendship and spirit. There is something magical about our group – an understanding of what the other needs in terms of time and space.  And that is what we savor during our week away:  time and space. How appropriate since our common bond is our remarkable sculpture teacher, the late Mike Skop, who taught us so much about time, distance and space.