Haystack

There is a place on a massive granite ledge, built almost entirely of wood, called Haystack School of Arts and Crafts. From early spring to Indigenous People’s Day weekend, artists congregate there to work on their craft with an amount of focus uncommon in today’s world. The studios, cafeteria, and cabins are without wi-fi, and cell phone signal is dismal. I was lucky enough to win the lottery and attend Haystack’s Open Door program this year, taking a poetry class with the astounding and prolific Annie Finch.

I won’t get too into the details of the weekend--I plan on keeping these blog posts crisply short. What I want to talk about was the focus I experienced. Released from the need to check my phone constantly for messages, released from televisions and news programs, I discovered a part of myself I’d always suspected but never really knew was there.

The weekend was healing in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. I was in a class of only women, which was perhaps the greatest blessing within the weekend. Without a dominating or judging male presence, we were able to express, to be ourselves. We cried, we spiraled, we hugged, we shared. It was beautiful.

I felt the waves crashing up against the land at night. I sat on those granite ledges and wrote poems I didn’t know I could write. I watched the clouds play out the sunrise over a jetty of pine trees, a porpoise swim in and out of the cove, the first lobster boats hauling in their first traps of the day. The sound of a boat going out onto the water… that gurgly rumble of the motor, the deep vibrations it sends through the air… there’s nothing else like it.

To everyone telling me I need to get out of Maine to succeed as an artist, and in life: you have no idea how rich this beautiful state truly is.