The winter brings a depth of silence that allows us to go inside ourselves and understand more of what we want to show on the outside of ourselves. For me, winter is my favorite time of year. In Vermont it presents challenges each day with shifts in weather and environment but it also forces us to surrender to the earth. It is that place of surrender, devotion, respect and stewardship that my son and I have created Kumari of the Woods.
Ben and I are good partners in this forested retreat we are creating because we both require silence and reflection. He and I both have busy work lives – he as a heating and plumbing contractor and me as a registered psychotherapist and life coach and consultant. While we share some meals together, we both need our quiet at night to recover from our day’s work.
The experience of creating and making our dream for Kumari of the Woods to become real has been stressful yet informative. We are learning much more than we ever imagined.
The initial inspiration of bringing guests to stay on this healing land felt like a perfect fit for our lives as creative and quiet souls. We deeply desired others to feel the power of the trees and positive energy of our forest and it seemed so easy to move forward. We were grateful for the many donations we received and a large donation that supported our start. We were grateful to sell other property and use that money for this start up.
And as all dreams unfold, there can be moments where confusing and complex images and passages begin to appear. I do not know about you but I never totally understand my dreams so I try to sit in silence and reflect upon them.
Our dream for this retreat has needed to overcome two major permits that we never imagined at the start. One is for the state and one for our small town.
Ben and I entered these processes with optimism and our attitude continues to remain hopeful and collaborative. But the process has also stalled the credit union commercial loan we had been promised last April. Thus, we have used up all of our finances while waiting for others to decide our fate.
If that is not a lesson in humility, I do not know what is!
Ben and I have had a choice: we could give up and hold regret in our hearts or we could get creative, bolder and more responsive to the red tape that holds us back.
It is not in our nature to give up.
While we wait, we are reaching out to other funding partners and planning the event space where we want to hold yoga classes. It is about thinking positive, planning ahead and remaining hopeful.
We are so pleased that many health and wellness teachers have reached out to us to teach at Kumari of the Woods and our small town of Strafford, Vermont has embraced our plans with enthusiasm, support and such positive vibrations sent our way. Those are such a win for us despite these setbacks of permits and money.
Our purpose has always remained clear to us: we do not wish to be intrusive or create a nuisance on the land or a nuisance in our community. We want to work within what we have, be purposeful in how we design these built spaces and allow the rest to retain the natural flow of private walking trails and comfortable places to stay. Two of the three all-season cottages are close to halfway built. Gratitude is farther along than Grace. They sit waiting with much greater patience than Ben and I have.
We are listening to the land, paying attention to our hearts and walking and visioning how this holds us, both in the challenges as well as the celebrations.
In addition, we occupy our weekends with torching the wood for the exterior of cottages to sit side by side with the stone work in this Japanese process called yakisugi or more commonly known as shou sugi ban. Beautiful darkened wood lasts a very long time with this burning method. And aesthetically it will add to the natural beauty sitting within the forest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakisugi
I hold an intention to communicate more frequently with our retreat followers. I hope to send a communication through a newsletter every month. At this point, as we pause in the construction, I do not know the date for the opening of this small, intentional retreat.
Please stay tuned as it will happen.
We are always grateful for the fine work of our contractor, Jonathan Tokarski and our excavator, Cody Campbell both of Barnard, Vermont. Matt Piper, our electrician, finished the work on Gratitude and that cottage passed its electrical inspection. Larry Pickett has delivered truckload after truckload of hard pack to the driveway and Ian MacKenzie, our septic engineer, signed off a perfectly elegant septic system installed.
What more could we ask for? Well, the recent collaboration and brain power of Raquel Blue and Jeremy Wenger of Tiny Home Plug has added to our planning and once these permits get wrapped up and we can secure a closing on our funding, then these winter months of silence may become very noisy and loud at Kumari of the Woods.
Just waiting to shout out. 🙂
Stay tuned and stay aware as we are of every blessing along the way.
With Grace & Gratitude,
kumari patricia and ben