Retreating

Hello friends!


Had the pleasure of a short retreat this past weekend to Port Townsend, WA with the Lindle sisters. If you haven't been to PT before, I highly recommend it for writerly and artistic inspiration. The sweeping seascapes are plenty enough reason to visit, but the lively town is also full of interesting characters and happenings.

For example, I spent a fair amount of time at this coffee shop counter writing and watching the sailboats go by...



...and was then interrupted by the arrival of a robot and several teenage engineers.

      

They were prepping their contraptions for the Rhododendron Festival Parade and I even got to sneak a peek at their lab, located in a loft above the coffee shop. 



Since I'm currently fiddling with a MG sci-fi project, I was delighted by this encounter. Though, truth be told, it was a bit hard to focus with this going on in town:



and this:


and this:


(Please note the random Outlander in the background!)



Eventually, Darian and I decided to explore the quieter side of town and visited several gorgeous Victorian homes, the crown jewels of which were this cliffside home:


and the Ann Starrett Mansion:


The house is run as an inn and has been for sale for ten years. No one will buy it because it requires so much work and pricey historical preservation. The innkeeper let us have a look around and it was hard not to imagine a life in which we buy the inn and run it as a writerly retreat center. Sigh...

So we took a walk to the lighthouse to soothe our heartache for such a life.



It worked! Fresh air always reminds me that life is full and good. We have so much to be grateful for, not the least of which is friendship.






Hope this entry finds you all well. We missed many of you this weekend.


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