LOCALadk Magazine

60 Fall 2018 LOCALadk Magazine LOCALadk Of course I knew of Anne LaBastille. I grew up in the north- western Adirondacks and read her first memoir, Woodswom- an, when I was a teenager. The cover showed a beautiful blonde woman with a German shepherd, and the pair lived in the middle of nowhere on an Adirondack lake. To protect her privacy LaBastille gave her lake a fictional name, and as the Adirondacks are filled with ponds and lakes, I didn't specu- late long about where exactly she lived. And then there I was, years later, on a gloriously warm and sunny Columbus Day Weekend, driving down a long, dead- end road to Twitchell Lake, the real name of LaBastille's hide-away. Next to me, Liz Wycoff, a fiction writer who had flown to the Adirondacks from Wisconsin, leaned for ward as we turned the last corner and a long narrow lake stretched out in front of us. The golds and reds of autumn reflected on the dark water. Both of us were incredibly excited to be at the lake and when we saw our living quarters, the Twitchell Lake Lodge, we looked at each other and grinned. Nathalie Thill, the di- rector of the Adirondack Writing Center (AWC) as well as our cook and "house mother," took us into the big, newly ren- ovated kitchen and then the enormous living room—a dark place with a massive fireplace and heavy wooden chairs and a generous amount of Adirondack décor: animal heads on the walls, birch bark furniture, and artwork featuring loons, ducks, and bears. A covered front porch had rocking chairs and a hammock; a path led to a dock with canoes and kayaks. We would not be roughing it. Anne LaBastille's simple cab- in could have fit inside the living room of the Twitchell Lake Lodge. I felt slightly guilty for having this luxur y— each writer had a bedroom with a private bath —but in a building so large all six of us would have room to work without disturbance. A writing residency is a gift of time for writers – time to work without the usual distractions of day jobs, families, and all the obligations of busy lives. This residency would give us two weeks of work time and the bonus of the quiet beauty of an Adirondack lake when the summer season is over. The six writers met as a group that evening at dinner in the smaller of two dining rooms. Nathalie had prepared the first of a series of superb meals, and we began to know one another. Glenn had flown in from Colorado but he spoke with a soft British accent. Madeline had a quick smile and long, dark hair that hung smoothly to her waist. Noah was more youthful than his graying beard implied, and Caitlin and Liz were in their 30s, smart and beautiful. I had expected that the quiet Adirondack location would inspire my writing, and it certainly did, but even more inspi- ration came from my fellow writers. Noah got up early ever y morning, started the coffee pot, and sat at his corner table, producing poems with such rich imager y that listening to him read felt like eating expensive dark chocolate. Glenn would rush into the kitchen with his teapot to get more hot water for his English tea then rush back upstairs to write for hours. After I went canoeing one misty morning with Madeline she Writing in the woods By Betsy Kepes

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