Just returned from our much-anticipated, at-least-annual visit to the Sky Meadow Retreat in Vermont’s Northeastern Kingdom mountains. The Sky Meadow property was first developed as a working farm in the 1850s, later became derelict, was rehabilitated and transformed into a spiritual/nature retreat in the 1980s and sustains a more recent ambition to serve as the metamodern Esalen of the East Coast.
Lasting seven days, this was one of our shorter visits, also distinguished by the fact that, unlike previous years, we were not attending primarily under a work-stay arrangement nor to help devise ritual for a metamodern retreat, rather to create a short video on the nascent tradition of Sky Meadow folkways. These are small, highly localized customs that we have been co-creating over the past four years; a repertoire of “insider” recommendations, things to do, field trips to take and symbolic practices that, naturally, become more meaningful with each return.
The following images are screenshots from the as-yet-unedited video:
Making a call on the Wind Phone, inside the Cave. A pebble is added after each call, marking it in time and space.
The Island Pond, habitat of fish, elusive frogs and occasional human swimmers.
Building a small stone cairn in the Green Realm.
Tossing a contemplative stone into the Angel Pond.
Chanting on the Hilltop.
Marking beginnings and endings at the Wayfaring Post.
Ploughman’s lunch and companionship on the Barn porch, overlooking the Pasture.
Field trip to the nearby Museum of Everyday Life, which applies a poetic, philosophical and mueseological perspective to chairs, toothbrushes, knots and other seemingly mundane items.
The field trip also took in our traditional visit to the Bread and Puppet Theatre – a venerable part of Vermont’s thriving counterculture scene – and their memorial space in the forest adjacent to the outdoor performance field and amphitheatre.
Spaghetti dinner on the porch at twilight. The Epicureans were right; it doesn’t get much better than this.
Reading in the Barn’s rustic Library, an archive especially of pre-2000s spiritual, philosophical and artistic literature.
The homesteading task of moving firewood into the woodshed for stacking, facilitated this year by an experimental wood-slide contraption improvised out of an ancient wooden ladder, an adjustable sawhorse and a sled.
Partnered movement exercise/dance in the Barn’s main space.
Harvesting carrots in the vegetable garden.
Keeping a watchful eye over the chickens, who were recently beset by a hawk.
Firing up the old-school Sauna, preparing for rounds of soulful, sweaty storytelling followed by a bracing plunge into the adjacent pond.
Community gathering around the firepit in the Hearth building.
Wildlife count this trip: three implicit and two explicit frogs, numerous ground squirrels who are all called Virgil, one skunk, one raccoon, two deer, coyote pack heard howling in the distance as we exited the Sauna (good timing). Despite the fact that Vermont is apparently home to between 7000 – 9000 bears, we’re yet to spot a single one. There’s always next year …