Travelogue

Gardens, Walking, Intentional Summer Slowness, and Creative Community

Jul 23, 2026

I spent the first part of July on the road, traveling from Connecticut to New York to New Jersey, co-leading a retreat, receiving the nurture of attending a retreat, and visiting friends along the way.

I am reminded how much of a gift a change of scenery can be.

Upon my return last week, my Friday creativity group structured our time around these beautiful questions written by my friend Kathy Swaar.

Where have you encountered Creativity this week? In the usual haunts of your current project? Someplace new? Someplace unexpected?

What and where is the good in wherever you and Creativity are meeting?

What’s been different, hard, or transformative? What would help you integrate and live into whatever is happening now?

We have explored these questions before but after ten days of solo travel, I was grateful to reflect on how creativity accompanied me in my travels and how enriched my relationship with creativity felt by new communities, perspectives, and places.

There were some themes that emerged too: gardens, walking, creative community, and the spaciousness of summer days. In each space, I felt an intentional slowness and presence to our activities and to each other.

The retreat I co-led in Connecticut focused on a theme of a Book of Hours, a personal devotional tool dating back to the Middle Ages. In our time together, we created collage images combining found imagery, cyanotype, marbled paper, mulberry paper and painting and drawing to represent the different hours of the day. Participants chose which times of day to depict according to their own rhythms. The books became something to take home as a reminder of the invitation to pause and reflect throughout the day. Many shared how they planned to place their book where it would be visible from a personal workspace during the day.

The setting for this retreat, Camp Washington, was founded by a man who loved George Washington and modeled their main building on Mount Vernon. Living just 3 miles from Mount Vernon here in Alexandria, it was surprising to see this familiar architecture in this New England setting.

While at camp, I was able to hike wooded trails, ride a zip line over the lake, enjoy delicious food from fresh local vegetables, and be nurtured by the creative community of Camp Washington staff and campers.

My time in Connecticut continued with a visit to friends in West Hartford. When I texted about the timing of my arrival, my friend wrote back describing her day’s schedule as gentle, a beautiful continuation of enjoying the spaciousness of summer. We walked to a botanical garden, along a stream to visit more friends, and to local restaurants in the town.

Getting to see my friend’s front garden was most inspiring to me. She described her creative process over several years and I gained an appreciation for the patience of gardening and her sense of collaboration with the perennial plants as they return and bloom each summer.

I drove from Connecticut to the Catskills in New York to attend a retreat focused on listening and slowing down with Christian McEwen at Menla retreat center.

Christian read from two of her books, World Enough and Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down and In Praise of Listening. If you are not familiar with these books, I highly recommend both of them.

Christian has provided me with creative coaching for the past few years via zoom, so it was lovely to finally meet in person.

The retreat focused on listening, on memories of childhood sounds, and on experiences of our own voices being well listened to or not heard at all.

One of my favorite activities was walking and listening and then recording the sounds heard with watercolors on paper. I had an accordion book with me and used it to record sounds on my walk. Below are a few pages of sounds including a babbling brook, swallows chirping, the step/swoosh of my walking, the gong of my water bottle hitting my backpack, the crunch of gravel, and piano chords.

A staff gardener and several resident garden volunteers joined our sessions, adding richness with their close knowledge of the site. I enjoyed the abundant gardens on my walks around the property.

I was grateful for the way the retreat held space for me to explore and listen - outwardly and inwardly and to be in creative community. In addition to hiking, writing and watercolor, I was invited to try out some drumming and enjoyed creative conversations sharing stories with other participants.

My final stop was on Long Beach Island in New Jersey. I arrived to a dinner table full of my friend’s family and friends and got to immediately join in a community viewing of the sunset from her rooftop looking out over the bay.

It was a delight to take long walks along the ocean and to enjoy creative community with my friend and her granddaughters, sharing favorite books, drawing together, and silk-screening t-shirts.

As I reflect on my travels, I am grateful for the friends who offered their hospitality. I am grateful for the chance to find creativity in new spaces and in familiar ways. I am grateful for creative conversations, reading, traveling, journaling, and the beauty of the natural environments in places I visited.

The good came in care and connection, in finding possibility in new spaces, in making new friends and reconnecting with long-time friends in new spaces and seasons.

My biggest hope for integration of all these experiences is to bring the slowness and presence I felt on retreat back to my home.

My garden immediately captured my attention when I returned because the sunflowers had grown so much in my time away. I want to continue to delight in this growth and notice it anew as it changes each day.

I’d love to hear your answers to these questions too.