{"id":1258,"date":"2016-03-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northpark.edu\/news\/what-we-learned-in-the-north-woods\/"},"modified":"2016-11-30T17:37:43","modified_gmt":"2016-11-30T22:37:43","slug":"north-park-writing-retreat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northpark.edu\/stories\/north-park-writing-retreat\/","title":{"rendered":"What We Learned In the North Woods"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Andie Roeder Moody<\/strong><\/p>\n Note: As web content manager and writer for University Marketing and Communications, I spend the majority of my days holed away in my office on Spaulding Avenue, writing about what\u2019s happening across campus. A few weeks ago, I had the rare privilege to join some of our students and faculty for a writing and hiking retreat. I was there to observe, write about the trip, and teach. Below is my account of the weekend. <\/em><\/p>\n Read the students\u2019 writing from the weekend here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n On the six-hour drive to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, students sing, reminisce, and discuss philosophy. A few know each other already; most of them are breaking the ice. When we arrive at Covenant Point Bible Camp, just past the Wisconsin border, it\u2019s been snowing all evening. The grounds are coated in a thick layer of powdery snow, and our van struggles to make it up the hill to the cabins. I didn\u2019t anticipate having no cell phone service. The faculty make no apologies for that\u2014or for the length of the drive. Though there are closer places we could hold the retreat, Covenant Point is special to them. It\u2019s remote and wooded; it feels connected to a tradition of nature writers, whom they harken this weekend: Thoreau, Emerson, Dillard. To get to our sessions, we walk several minutes from where we\u2019re staying to the isolated Nature Center, which is surrounded by trails and forest. Once there, we put our chairs into a circle around the fireplace, where one devoted student builds and tends the fire all weekend. For a few days, we get a slower pace of life than Chicago\u2014or even other camps\u2014offer. Before long, no one misses their cell phones much. A student tells me she\u2019s really enjoying not<\/em> knowing what her friends are up to on Facebook.<\/p>\n The lessons build off each other. A quote from Greg’s tracking session becomes a writing prompt for the day: \u201cThe tracks tell you the story of what happened.\u201d Students read us their stories about tracks of all sorts\u2014scars, train lines, tattoos, a friend\u2019s suicide, a carpenter father\u2019s hands. Liza Ann Acosta<\/a>, professor of English, leads an experiential session on walking. (Listen to the students read their responses to her prompt here<\/a>.) After we eat dinner together, Karl teaches on his two passions\u2014philosophy and photography. We close the day by having students read a piece of published writing they enjoyed. On Sunday, I lead a session about how writing has allowed me to learn to pay attention to the world around me. Kristy Odelius<\/a>, professor of English, follows me that afternoon with a talk about, essentially, finitude, which she called \u201cthe dilemma of the day.\u201d Kristy and the authors she referenced offer one answer\u2014play.<\/p>\n Several international students were on the trip, in part to improve their English. Some were self-conscious about sharing writing in their second language, but Kristy commended their work\u2019s clarity, beauty, and strength. I agreed. \u201cInternational students don\u2019t have a home to go home to during the breaks, like the Americans have,\u201d Axel Rejler, a Swedish exchange student, told me. \u201cSo this is our chance to get off campus, calm down, and think.\u201d Looking around the snowy terrain, he said, \u201cReally, it looks like home. This could be Sweden.\u201d<\/p>\n But the weekend was more than recreation. There were chunks of time devoted to writing on your own, and the students took it seriously, preparing earnestly to share new pieces of writing on Sunday night. What they exhibited throughout the weekend in playfulness, they matched with vulnerability. One shared a poem about the shame he once harbored over his mother\u2019s vocation as a home cleaner. Another, a ballad about surviving depression. Another, Bob Dylan-inspired lyrics about Swedish politics. The prompts given in all of our lessons were represented\u2014poetry from a creative writing assignment Kristy gave, essays about walking. I cried as a student read her reflections about the power of paying attention. I\u2019m not sure what I was expecting from the students\u2019 writing, but what they shared throughout the weekend far exceeded it. I\u2019ve collected some of it here<\/a>, because I think what they wrote is beautiful and worth reading.<\/p>\n Students protested as we packed up our vans to head back to Chicago Monday morning. I wanted to protest too. Kristy calls this trip a \u201chigh-impact learning experience.\u201d Classroom time, writing, and exams are present at all universities, but this is the kind of thing that sets 天美传媒 apart. In exit interviews with seniors, she often hears the writing retreat brought up as a highlight and formative experience.<\/p>\n At the outset of the trip, a student told me he was thinking about transferring; he hasn\u2019t been able to make good friends in his first year at 天美传媒. Over the next four days, I see a change in him as he learns and writes with his peers\u2014he\u2019s more open, happy, understood. I don\u2019t know where he is in his decision now, but he did tell me the retreat was the most meaningful experience he\u2019s had at 天美传媒 so far.<\/p>\n When asked to describe the weekend in one word, students said \u201crestful,\u201d \u201cpeace,\u201d \u201cemotional,\u201d and \u201crejuvenate.\u201d My word would be \u201cconnected.\u201d This, to me, is the heart of the weekend: connection. A college education is more than the sum of one\u2019s syllabi or credit hours. It\u2019s the connections of those things with other, memorable, cherished components\u2014conversations, experiences, relationships, intellectual revelations. It\u2019s the connections between disciplines: What does it look like to be a writer when you\u2019re majoring in government? What does an adult life of balance and connection look like? What we began on the retreat with the students is a start towards what we hope they\u2019ll do throughout their time at 天美传媒 and beyond: live connected<\/em>, think deeply, play, pay attention.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nCHICAGO (March 29, 2016) \u2014 It\u2019s the Friday before midterms, and we\u2019re loading up vans in the lot behind Burgh Hall. The students are discussing all the homework they\u2019ll be trying to disremember for the next few days. They don\u2019t get credit for attending this, and it\u2019s not mandatory. Students of all majors are welcome, but there\u2019s a strong showing of English and philosophy majors. \u201cThey\u2019re about to take on the final push before spring break,\u201d Karl Clifton-Soderstrom<\/a>, associate professor of philosophy, tells me. \u201cIt\u2019s a breaking point in the semester where most of them could really use a rest. The trip is good for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saturday and Sunday, our full days at the camp, are structured around meals and learning sessions, with time in between to write and two readings to share your work. Professor of Philosophy Greg Clark <\/a>opens the retreat with a lesson on tracking animals. We walk around a snowy field and follow the tracks of rabbits and deer. Greg\u2014whom the students refer to by first name\u2014sends them off to track animals. He asks them to come back with a story: what the narrative of the animals\u2019 movements might be. One group of students tracks the path of a rabbit they imagine to be a Rambo-style secret forest police officer. Another group finds tracks so big that the only imaginable solution is a Yeti. I suggest snowshoes; they are unconvinced\u2014and share a poem they wrote about the Yeti.<\/p>\n
This was perhaps the lesson that we were all learning most acutely that weekend. Though the sessions and the writing time were powerful and thought-provoking, what felt most remarkable was the shared experience. Afternoons spent\u2014faculty and student alike\u2014tubing carelessly down hills and pegging each other with snowballs. An evening when we took on the \u201cpolar bear plunge,\u201d which consisted of sitting in a sauna to get warm before jumping in the frozen lake. The students, in their invincibility, were so delighted with the feeling of the plunge that they did it two or three more times each. Kristy\u2019s seven-year-old son, Caleb, reminding us all of how the world looked from a few feet lower, chiming in with a childlike perspective during heady conversations, and keeping us laughing. On our last day, a pack of us cross-country skiing and snowshoeing across the mile-wide lake to explore its islands, where we discovered yurts and giant swings. \u201cI think when you play together, it\u2019s the best way to get to know each other,\u201d Markus Tenf\u00e4lt, a Swedish exchange student<\/a>, told me. \u201cPeople relax when they have fun\u2014it breaks down the barriers.\u201d<\/p>\n