Retreat

Last Friday, I went on a retreat with the English department faculty. This was the noun retreat:

re-treat (noun): A place affording peace or security. A period of group withdrawal for meditation or instruction. A place of seclusion, esp. for contemplation.

Not to be confused with the verb retreat: re-treat (verb): to draw back, move back, pull away, pull back, recede. However, we did retreat from college students, so I suppose it was a verb, too.

I'm off topic.

I went on a retreat. We jumped in some large vans on campus and retreated to nature. Harriman State Park, actually. We started our day with some nature readings and then we had to apply what we'd studied so we went on a nature walk. (So we were retreating from our retreat.)

We observed the birds (I'd never heard of a bufflehead before but now I've seen one) and the sum total of two wildflowers.

Then it was on to more important matters. Writing about nature.

Or just visiting about nature, as the case may be.  But it was all very serious business, let me assure you. (Notice all the jackets. It was a pretty chilly day, and we found ourselves retreating from nature).

No retreat is complete without food, and we had plenty of it. There were snacks all morning long and then we had a fabulous lunch cooked up by Brother Hammer, a member of the English dept. faculty. He made chicken salad sandwiches and french dip sandwiches and his mother's chocolate cake. It was so delicious. (And now I have to retreat to my treadmill.) Of course, there was some department business to attend to, but that was a minimal part of our day and we quickly retreated to the retreat.

I have successfully retreated. I am now more energized and excited and still love my job, not to mention about five pounds heavier.