The natural habitat of delight, I’ve discovered, is in the wild. Sure, it may knock on your door and come for a visit, and sometimes you can find it in a Google search, but you are more likely to find it when you step outside and say yes to an encounter with the world. Today’s 3 Items of Delight were brought to you by the letter R. As in Retreat.
A couple weeks ago, I winded my way down through Ontario on two-lane highways to join a weekend women’s retreat. It was the fourth or fifth time I had attended one. These retreats aren’t the ones you are thinking about, the vegan-spiritual-meditation retreats that mark the latest solstice. These aren’t writers’ retreats, either, like the one I’ll be co-hosting with
in Muskoka this coming January (more on that below). No. These retreats are bring-your-cooler-and-sleeping-bag retreats, where women take over a summer camp for a weekend and sleep in bunks and have a good time, summer camp activities included. There’s very little retreating involved, in fact.
Thanks for reading The Book Case! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
There were many delights on offer, but you’ve already read about my love of road trips and singing in the car and campfire, so I selected a couple that stood out, and one that made me cackle (because cackling is permitted on Halloween). And then…a bonus delight direct from the wilderness!
ABOUT THIS SERIES: I am exploring the practice of delight. It’s a mindset. It is mindfulness. It asks you to be open to receiving gifts unexpected. It was taught to me by two artists who shared their delights with me. So far, this is what I know:
Delight is to be shared.
Delight is to be offered in friendship.
Delight is to be centred and made into art.
These are my discoveries this month. Tell me, what delights you?
We had clambered into the voyageur-style canoe, twelve women whose average age was somewhere in the low fifties. The canoe was sitting low on the water with our weight, and I could dip my fingers into the October-chilled lake easily. We were snugged up in our lifejackets, and bundled into our fall weather gear. The mist was beginning to rise off the water when we pushed away from the dock.
Twelve women in a canoe is not a silent canoe. Our guide, the summer camp owner, managed our enthusiasm with good humour, however.
We moved forward on the water, the fall colours clamouring at us from shore. They called out, Time is slipping away, you know. As if we needed the reminder. Still, we tipped our toques in acknowledgement.
Like the paddler behind me, I was doing my best to paddle in sync with the woman in front, but she wasn’t following a regular rhythm. The canoe, built for children, offered little room to move, and I felt pins and needles in my legs, then a growing numbness in my foot. I squirmed to adjust my position and imagined how I would get out onto the dock later without feeling in my feet. A walrus came to mind.
A family of loons was diving nearby. They heard us coming and kept their distance.
October morning paddle meets summer camp fun. Photo by Lucy Brancato Santos.
As we entered a channel between the shore and an island, the guide asked for our silence. He wanted to show us something the summer camp kids loved to do.
“You’ll only hear it if you’re silent,” he told us. He manoeuvered the canoe to face the towering hill that dropped dramatically to the shore.
“Now, when I say ‘sonic’, you’ll yell ‘boom’. I’ll count to three first, then shout it. It needs to be loud and fast. You’ll see what happens. Let’s practice in a whisper first.”
The summer camp kids probably loved this guy. We already did.
“3… 2… 1…” he whispered, then, “sonic!”
“Boom!” we all whispered loudly.
We tried it a few more times until we were in unison and had the sharpness of delivery he wanted from us.
“We’ll do it for real now, and you need to shout it towards those trees.” He repositioned the canoe. “Then you need to stop and be quiet to hear it.”
We went silent again, all twelve of us. The boat rocked gently. If the loon called out now, we would hear it.
“3… 2… 1…. Sonic!”
“BOOM!”
We shouted it sharply, enthusiastically, then we dropped into silence, waiting for The Thing.
It happened: Our voices returned to us a second later, circling above us.
“BOOM!”
Twelve women should back to us from the sky, the hill, the trees.
The sound swirled.
We cheered. And then we did it again.
All the costumes, all the time
Today is Halloween, but unlike other years, my urge to pull together a costume was already satisfied thanks to the women’s retreat. Not only did we have a dance with a Western theme (a place to show off what we learned in the line-dancing lesson earlier that day), but the first night— the first night! you know, when we hadn’t yet met everyone — featured a lip sync contest.
The lip sync contest, a pastime of yore. I remember them from childhood and youth. In Grade 7, I clearly recall being on stage as a backup singer to Michael Jackson’s ‘Man in the Mirror.’ Our high school had a strong drama program which trained us well both in improv and rehearsed performance, but an air band competition took the stage each year, and it was especially attractive to the metalheads. Each year, one big-haired group vied for first place lip-syncing and air-banding to Metallica.
I blame karaoke for the near-death of lip sync.
So, as our weekend getaway drew near, I was thrilled to hear my bunkmates were totally on board the lip sync contest.
If you are wondering, Facebook Messenger is completely up to the task of planning a performance. Costumes were pulled out of closets and rooted out of Value Village, then posted for approval. Choreography was located thanks to YouTube. And props were identified thanks to old videos.
That is how New Kids on the Block returned to a small stage in the woods near Bancroft, Ontario.
For four minutes, we were hangin’ tough, costumed and choreographed, and performing our hearts out. And realizing about three minutes in that the DJ had the extended version. We knew about the guitar solo, but not the piano solo.
NKOTB made a one-night-only appearance in the woods somewhere east of Bancroft, Ontario.
It was entirely awesome to pull out a smidgen of bravery to get on stage with friends. Behind our costumes, we performed. We were New Kids.
(What’s that? Me? Oh, I was Danny. And I play a mean guitar solo on a baseball bat.)
Memes IRL
On my way through Ontario, I stopped on Main Street in Huntsville to visit the indie bookstore, Cedar Canoe Books. I wanted to chat with Chandler, the owner, about bringing our writing retreat participants to his bookshop when we were there in January. As a book coach, I love talking about comparative titles with authors as they plan their book projects. What better way to learn about books than to browse?
As I waited for him to finish with a customer, I poked around the shop, and then I saw them and laughed out loud. The memes were previously only known to me through Twitter, but they always made me laugh. And now, here they were on a deck of cards. Two decks of cards, in fact!
The Effin Birds crack me up. The creators match illustrated stock art of birds with the terrible thoughts that come to mind especially when forced to work with someone you don’t like. These are the things we think but don’t say, the comebacks we come up with hours after insult.
And now here they were, saying all the bad things on the backs of playing cards. Not just one deck, but two! How could I resist such a delight served with a snicker?
Want to see more of this $&*#-ing delight? Head over here.
Would an escape from your routine get you back to your book? I’m co-hosting a women’s winter writing retreat for women in Huntsville, Ontario January 16-19, 2024 with
Last Thursday, the collective mood of Sudbury, Ontario was buoyed when two moose showed up downtown.
I first heard about it from my daughter:
She sent three photos of the schoolyard, where two moose were hanging out, more than half the height of the football goals.
Of course, when wildlife shows up in any town, everyone wants to see it. Last year, in our town, at least forty of us showed up at the playground when a momma bear and three cubs climbed a tree.
This time, pedestrians and drivers lined up along the street to see the moose visitors. Students stayed at the windows during class and watched the moose frolic in the football field.
The school board posted some photographs a couple hours later, and the post was shared 421 times over the next day.
Social media was active that night. People were waiting for updates. Where were the moose now? Did they find their way back? Did they follow the path down the road that the police set out when they closed the street? Were the moose okay? It was a well-needed distraction from the terrible news of the world. A radio station gave regular moose updates, and the two visitors even made the local papers:
One person dropped the image of the moose into images of recognizable local spots in the style, Bernie Sanders-style.
We may live in a place surrounded by bush. We might have bears making routine stops in our backyards. But moose. Moose! We stop for moose.
YOUR TURN: Have you found delight in escape? When has the natural world brought you surprises of the best sort?
Do you need deadlines to motivate you to write? I do. That’s why I set up monthly sessions to check in with fellow writers. We meet on the third Sunday of the month for a quick Zoom call where we set our goals for the upcoming month. Is this something you need? The next call is this Sunday, November 19 at 7 p.m. EST. Register today at this link.
About this newsletter: 3 Items of Small Delight is only one of three ‘departments’ in my newsletter The Book Case. In other issues, I will share more about writing with purpose, from my perspective as a book coach. Coming soon: How do we choose the books we read? (I’ll be asking you, too!)
Do you love reading about writing? Join my WhatsApp Community broadcast list where I drop links to the best articles I’m reading and new opportunities for writers.
Thanks for reading The Book Case! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
