A Retreat Wednesday's Wanderings

This glowing Wednesday morn was greeted with smiles and anticipation. Today we are quickening thru our yoga, munching thru breakfast (although you can see Darlene, who's made a personal commitment to quickly sketch each breakfast, working away!) and plumply packing  our fabulous "brown-bag" bundle for our hike over to Duck Lake.

It's a mild four mile round trip up over the ridge behind Lake Alpine, dropping into a wide yawning meadow. Along the path we doddle for photos or nature detailing (did I mention one of the participants was a Botanist?), finally reaching Duck Lake and her languid granite surroundings.

Before our sandwiches, we launch into one of the two processes planned for our afternoon. Here is my resulting "Word Whittle" page, which I later illustrate according to the word I had selected. Can you guess what my word was? We break for our mid-day meal sprinkled amongst the trees and rock chairs. Sighs follow our round bellies and it's a good time to just watch Jean's demo for our next exercise. Once we attempt to understand "seeing" the way she's described, we patter off individually, seeking perfect subject matter for our version of "shadow-seeing". My "shadow" page not only reflected trees I was seeing, but I also had a flood of my own shadow side crop up. So I wanted to reflect that with the pensive portrait I found of myself ... keeping it also in solemn shadow monochromatic rendering.

Once back to the Lake Alpine cabins, we slithered into relaxation. The most robust activity we could indulge in ~ was the reading of our previous word exercise and sip wine! Our evening meal, "Lemongrass infused Jasmine Rice, Summer Beans and Ginger Marinated Prawns" was savory. Leaving the remaining hours filled with invested conversation and even some journal work (which I recall became so hilarious that I had tears of joy pouring down my cheeks!).

Gosh . . . and we just have to get up and have all this fun again tomorrow!!