Winter Writing Retreat, Jan 2024

Start the New Year with a Deep Dive into Your Writing

Join a small, welcoming, and supportive community of writers for a personalized writing retreat at one of West Virginia’s most beautiful State Parks. Writers will stay in the historic cabins of Lost River State Park, a little over 2 hours outside of DC. 

Writers of all experience levels and projects are welcome. This retreat will provide a perfect opportunity for those who have been wanting to dive into that book project, collection, essay, family history, or script. 

Retreat includes a one-on-one consultation with award winning writer, Dr. Michelle LaFrance. Michelle has taught writing, coached writers, and facilitated writing communities for over 20 years.

Registration fee includes a private room in an updated cabin, morning movement/yoga sessions, a Saturday evening reading of your work (in Wardensville, WV), and all meals. 

Initial Deposit: $187.50; Remainder of payment due upon or before arrival

More on Michelle LaFrance and Writing Lost River: Writinglostriver.org

To reserve your space or for inquiries: mlfpoet@gmail.com

More on Lost River State Park: https://tinyurl.com/nhf8b5et

—> We have reserved cabins 7, 14, 15, 16 and 17.

–> Two friendly and well behaved dogs are welcome to attend this retreat with their people. 

Retreat Schedule

Thursday, January 4th

3:00 pm: *Check in/Settle In/ Start Writing

6:30 pm: Dinner and Introductions to Other Writers

7:30 pm: Private writing time

Friday, January 5th

8:00 am: Morning Movement with Havala (Optional)

8:00 am to 10 am: Coffee and breakfast 

8 am to 6:30 pm: Private writing time

Noon to 2:00 pm: Pick up sack lunch

4:00 pm: Optional Gentle Hike w/ Michelle 

6:30 pm: Dinner

Meetings with Michelle 12:00 pm to 9:00 pm 

Saturday, January 6th

8:00 am: Morning Movement with Havala (Optional)

8:00 am to 10:00 am: Coffee and breakfast 

8:00 am to 3:30 pm: Private writing time

Noon to 2:00 pm: Pick up sack lunch

Meetings with Michelle noon to 3:00 pm 

3:30 pm: Visit Wardensville, Reading at Word Play 

5:30 pm: Dinner at Mac’s Bingo

7:30 pm: Return to Cabin Private Writing Time

Sunday, January 7th

8am: Morning Movement with Havala (Optional)

8 am to 10 am: Coffee and breakfast 

11:00 am Check Out/Pack Cars

Noon: (Optional) Gentle Hike

1 pm: Return home

Stoneware with Kathryn Kavanagh

July 15th and 22nd

The email I received from Kathy Kavanaugh read:

“I live in the woods 7 miles outside of ‘downtown Mathias”’(good luck finding that). There are a couple of creeks to ford on the way in, although one is dry now. The other one has some water but not much, and both have rocky bottoms so mud is not an issue. On the other hand, the road is dirt and bumpy. You don’t need 4-wheel drive but you will need a vehicle with some clearance, and give yourself some time to traverse the mile and a third. If you find really rustic roads daunting we can meet you where you can park before the first creek in the hayfield.”

Kathy opens her studio to five or six students once each year in the summer, offering a class through the Lost River Education Foundation. I was excited when I heard about the class–Kathy’s studio is a site that has been integral to a number of local artists who now make and sell pottery in the Lost River Valley at arts fairs and other venues.  

Getting to Kathy’s studio is part of the charm. 

Directions to Kathy Kavanaugh’s studio:

If you are on Corridor H; exit at Baker.

Turn toward Baker on old Route 55. At the BP (Corner Mart) , turn onto WV 259 south.

Stay on 259 through Lost City and until you get to Mathias.

Look for the old log cabin on your right. Just prior to the log cabin (the Mathias homestead), turn right onto Howards’ Lick Road.

In about a mile, look for Jenkins Hollow Road on the left. If you land in Lost River State Park, turn around and go back to Jenkins Hollow Road.

Take Jenkins Hollow Road to its end. Watch for deer, particularly does and fawns; there are many out this time of year.

Turn right onto Cullers Run Road. Stay on that over the little crooked bridge (the bridge is contoured to match the creek rather than the road—very West Virginia.)

Look for Perry Whetzel Road on the right. This is a dirt road. We live 1.3 miles from the mail boxes there.

Stay on Perry Whetzel Road over the bridge and past the green cottage.

Where Perry Whetzel Road forks and goes up the mountain, take the low road: Hidden Hollow.

Stay on Hidden Hollow Road through the creek (presently dry) and woods (past the gas line road) and then past the sign for 1514 (old cabin owned by our partnership). Just stay along the creek until you see our red barn at the junction of Hidden Hollow Road and Jesse Landis Lane. Ford the creek and veer left toward the Airstream trailer. You can park anywhere around the trailer. My studio is in the red barn.  

Sinking In, Loving Clay

I was a little late to the first class, as I had a board meeting to attend at the Artist’s Coop.  When I arrived, the other students–Austin and Brian, who I learned quickly were actually my neighbors and another woman who is the neighbor of a friend of ours (the Lost River Valley is so, so small)–were already working away on vases and bowls and boxes. There was the dusty smell of clay in the air and the thick silence characteristic of artists deep in their work.

I chose to make a platter. Kathy gave me a big block of white clay, a metal platter about the size that I wanted mine to be (for a form), and showed me to the pressing table, where I could flatten the clay into a slab.  

There’s something really special about working clay on a  warm summer day in an open building with a cement floor. Every so often a bumble bee or a fly or a hummingbird would buzz by or two hummers would tussle over sipping-rights at the feeder. The warm breeze would lift the table cloth and stir up dust on the floor. The branches and flowers and leaves of the garden nodded and swayed. 

After pressing the clay into a flat round-ish slab, I found a few summer wild flowers and a fern in the field to push into the surface of the clay. . . I had to work quickly, because the day’s heat was drying the clay to leather hardness more quickly than I could work. I gave up on hoping for perfectly smooth and rounded edges because of this. The lip of the platter would just have to be ragged and inconsistent–I was relearning skills I hadn’t used for decades, perfect was not the goal.

I ended the first day of class by incising my initials and stamping a star into the bottom of the platter. Then, I set my  piece on the shelf to await firing in the kiln. I always feel a little thrill when I do that–you never know how it will look when fired and the piece will change again when glazed.

Glazing

The next Saturday, I returned to Kathy’s and filed as much of the unevenness out of the edges of the platter as I could (dusty work <achoooo!>), then glazed the platter.  I was hoping for a more consistent blue on the surface of the platter, but ended up with a very mottled and uneven surface.  The ferns and flowers are visible, but the blue and white glaze are splotchy and the blue is not as dark as I thought it would be.

Upon pick up, I was excited to see what the platter had turned out to look like. But, it looked nothing like what I’d imagined or tried to set up.

Still, I was less disappointed with all of the imperfections of the piece than determined to try again with a different vision next time around. I might choose to do a platter again, but perhaps with a more obviously and exaggeratedly dramatic lip that would make the raggedness a feature.

I had wanted to make sure the black plant stems/leaves showed through and over corrected a bit too much. Because the clear glaze did not cover the full surface of the platter, I decided to use the platter in the garden instead of in the kitchen. I think it’s a cool piece, but it is nowhere near what I expected it would look like. 

A Terrific Learning Experience 

I’ll keep my eyes open for an opportunity to try my hand at hand building again. And to enjoy Kathy’s warmth, wonderful sense of humor, and knowledge of the area and its people.

The best feature of this class was spending time in Kathy’s studio with some neighbors I had only just met, having the chance to talk with Kathy about her professional and historical work, (she is a medical anthropologist with a lengthy career history working with undergraduates). Her work with quilts in the area–specifically signature quilts–her extensive background with the Artist’s cooperative and the Lost River Museum, and her stories of life, wildlife, and people in the area added some wonderful color to the class. We chatted historical projects in the valley and I came away knowing more about the place I now call home.

Start 2024 with a deep dive into your writing

Wild Water: Cold Spring, Star Tannery, VA

Date of Visit: June 16, 2023

8.1 miles east of Wardensville is an Artesian spring that the locals refer to as “Cold Spring.”

You will find it on the south side of Wardensville Pike (the road all outsiders, like me, tend to refer to as “48/55”–our primary reference being highway signs and maps). The spring is easily recognizable for the muddy and rutted turn off, not far from the state line and the Tuscarora Trail head. There’s often a long line of cars when I pass, as people in the area will wait for their turn to fill up and take water home. 

I tracked the spring down online, where it is noted to be in Star Tannery, an unincorporated community in southwestern Frederick County. Web searches will suggest it has no formal name. Yet, when I inquired about the spring in the FB “social guild” for the Lost River Valley,  a gentleman replied that “all his life,”  he had heard it called “Cold Spring.”  

Other users note the aliveness, freshness, and sweet taste of the water. Some, like me, will stop again and again.

There are many photos and videos of the spring online. It is indeed something to see–beautiful in its rustic simplicity. Water pours through two PVC pipes into the belly of a stone and mud depression–it is not quite a well. The bottom is strewn with stones the color of rust, slate, and marble, interspersed with multicolored sand and hard packed orange-ish earth. A wood platform has been put in place–it is now scuffed and weathered, so that visitors might easily bend and fill a jug of water or dip their hands in the outflow. 

The water itself is the best living water I’ve yet tasted.   

It is obvious from the signs of wear on the platform and the deep-worn ruts in the muddy drive, that Cold Spring is a well-loved site. And, it is easy to see why people of previous eras worshiped, celebrated, and prayed at such sites, leaving offerings for gods, saints, and magical beings beside similar waters. 

As if the mountains of the VA/WV line weren’t already magical enough, the air around Cold Spring is charged with ozone. It’s a sensory shift of temperature, dampness, and sound, the moment you step from your car. The earth leading to the spring seeps with water. The site is surrounded by Black Haw Viburnum, Redbud, Maple, and Sycamore. Enormous stones lay here and there. Above the spring is a cluster of American Hazel trees.  

On the date of my visit, I happened to have a spare water bottle, so went to fill it up. First, I bathed my hands in the rippling water pool beneath the pipes, patting little drops of cold, clean water on the skin of my forehead and the back of my neck. We were not yet in the hottest months of summer, but it was still hot enough that the water cooled me. 

I sat on my haunches and listened to the music of water plunging out of the stone hillside into the pool below and breathed in the smells of it, filling me up with a still, but heartfelt rightness–as if the water and bone that was my body remembered more clearly its kinship to the root of all life, water, earth, the spark of sentience.  

I filled my bottle up and sipped it, smiled that it tasted so wonderfully good, and sipped again. Wild water kicks up into a wet and living air. Wild water oozes up from the mud and wets down the earth.  Wild water like this spring is a reminder of a time when most waters were wild, clean, and sweet.

Online searches as I write this blog show me that the county regularly tests the water. These tests are complemented by the tests of visitors. Except for occasional positive hits for low percentages of E coli, the water tests as consistently clean, at times more clean than the water that flows from the taps of local homes. (See this site, and photos, here.)

I have made it a ritual now, when I pass over the mountain. If no car is parked at the pull in, I will turn off, park, and go to the water’s edge. I often fill my jug. My favorite prayer for this site, “Thank you for this gift of clean and wild water. May your waters always flow clean, clear, and wild.”     

I sip and savor the water as I drive back to the harried and hazy city. If I’m headed to my home in the mountains, I will trickle this water on the flower beds at our cabin or keep a bottle of it in the window sill, where it collects sunlight and reminds me of the peace to be found in the simplest of things.

30 Seconds with Cold Spring

Finding Lost River

From Wikipedia: “The Lost River is a 31.1-mile-long (50.1 km)^[2] river in the Appalachian Mountains of Hardy County in West Virginia‘s Eastern Panhandle region. The Lost River is geologically the same river as the Cacapon River: It flows into an underground channel northeast of McCauley along West Virginia Route 259 at “the Sinks” and reappears near Wardensville as the Cacapon. The source of the Lost River lies south of Mathias near the West Virginia/Virginia border. Along with the Cacapon and North rivers, the Lost River serves as one of the three main segments of the Cacapon River and its watershed.
The river is listed as impaired due to pathogens by the state of West Virginia; this is likely due to the livestock and poultry raising activities throughout the valley.
The river was named for the fact it is a losing stream.^[4]”

My first trip to the Lost River Valley was in spring of 2017. I booked a cabin at the state park for a week-long solo writing retreat and took up the first draft of an academic article which marked a change in my writing career. I wrote about the importance of creativity and inspiring students, particularly graduate students, to trust their creative impulses instead of socializing them into the habits of mind and constrained practices that have traditionally been associated with academic scholarship.

Creativity, too, is a form of intellect. And it has its own rigor.

Bobby and I hiking Big Schloss, Fall 2022

Something about the valley spoke to me, deeply, authentically—in unexpected ways. Perhaps it was the scent of the fireplace—a powerful smell baked into the stones of the massive stone hearth—in the updated, but historical cabin where I slept, the bed right next to that massive hearth. There’s something about the smell of a hardwood fire that has always reworked my brain chemistry. Remaking my sense of self within my skin.

Or, it was meeting the rows of bear corn, a native plant, along the steep trail to a former fire lookout. An oddity upon first sight—a plant that does not photosynthesize, but lives parasitically upon the roots of oak trees. It is also know as cancer root, or more disparagingly squaw root.

Trout Pond, Winter 2022, Photo: Andrew Lightman

Or, it was the hour of melodic lightness I spent sitting on a plane of stone as Howard’s Lick trickled beside me. The sound of pooling water within a stone basin, like the smell of fire, re-balances the deeper imprints of my being.

Or it was the whippoorwills trilling in the dusk, the first time I’d ever heard them in the wild. Even then, somehow, I thought, I’d come home.

We purchased our cabin in the Lost River Valley in the fall (of 2022).