For my first ever writing retreat, I performed a basic search and chose based on a few criteria. These are included, but not limited to:
- Budget (price per day, transportation cost, food, etc.)
- Transportation (I don’t drive, so how do I get there/back)
- Remoteness (adequately different from my usual space, but where can I go if I run out of food/supplies, and refer back to Transportation)
- Self-directed (no intention of going to workshops/social experience, I just wanted a space such as a cabin to buckle down and work uninterrupted)
- Amenities (wifi, sufficient electricity to charge a laptop and phone and bluetooth ear buds, how do I manage temperature of the cabin)
- Availability (narrow window of ideal time to claim a vacation week from my work while it isn’t freezing cold outside)
Given where I live, all these factors led me to Dreamers Writing Farm in the quiet town of Hepworth, Ontario. If there is a next time, I have one other candidate in mind that posed an immediate transportation challenge; something better cashflow might solve, which I can’t immediately count on.
Described as a glamping experience, Dreamers features a campground of bunkies and tents in addition to one full suite. This time, given my available days and other constraints, I considered the Coupland Bunkie to be the best available option.
Rookie mistake
When you are booking anything like this with constraints similar to my own, it pays to double check that your transportation options are running on the exact days you require them.
A quick search fetched me a website that would find available transit options to and from anywhere of my choosing. It correctly found my route to Dreamers Writing Farm, and it also made immediately clear that the express bus from Toronto to Owen Sound or Sauble Falls (the main leg of the journey) doesn’t run outside of tourist season. I would require the “milk run” route. At least I had one, and affordable to me.
I failed to go one step further and see which days of the week the “milk run” operates. This became a problem when I went ahead and booked the intended days of my stay, not realizing that this bus route didn’t operate on my arrival or departure days.
Fortunately, said bus was scheduled to operate the day prior to my intended arrival, and the day after my intended homeward departure.
This writing retreat had been financed by a generous donation. I anticipated paying for food, transportation, and everything else but the days of accommodation. I considered buying one more day at Dreamers on either end, but I knew I had not purchased/budgeted for that much camping food. I also didn’t know whether I would like my stay, whether the bed would be comfortable, or enough about the place to feel confident staying two additional nights. I booked a hotel in Owen Sound that was inexpensive yet reasonably close to the city bus terminal for the extra days bookending my trip. That added expense has ultimately put my monthly budget out of bounds, but I’m simply relating the solution I went with.
In hindsight, the length of time I stayed at Dreamers was appropriate for my purposes and I would not have wished to stay two more nights. The simple solution is to take appropriate care when booking, to avoid this situation.
FlixBus journey
The route I chose was via FlixBus, heading from Union Station, through a Pearson International Airport stop, then continuing north to Barrie, then sweeping west toward Owen Sound. It took approximately four hours.
The remainder of the trip to Hepworth occurred by rented shuttle. There might be public transit options in-season, but it was unclear from the information I could get whether that bus or any route like it was operating off-season. Apparently, one or more routes had recently been discontinued due to budget cutbacks.
The workspace

This is what I made work for just shy of thirty-five thousand words of rewriting The Gift-Knight’s Quest. Realizing I was unfamiliar with this place and with having a writing retreat at all, I set myself a nice low bar of “getting the project started”. Given the final word count of the draft, I would say that writing 50% of the total can adequately be described as having started. I believe the earliest chapters required the most extensive rewriting compared with the remainder of the book.
In one window, a chapter-by-chapter outline. In another, the draft. In a third, a PDF of the 2019 edition of The Gift-Knight’s Quest. Even when I chose to preserve/copy paragraphs and lines from the original, these rarely went without modification.
My father would hate that high-leg “barstool” type chair for a couple reasons, but I’m not him, so I made it work.
The Grounds

You can get great visuals on the Dreamers Writing Farm website, so few of my photos will be of the grounds. I did take some with my phone to share with family and friends.
Given that working chair, I certainly needed to stretch my legs once in a while. I would also go to the outdoor kitchenette to brew more coffee; however, given the small number of guests on my day of arrival, the owners generously offered that I keep the kettle with me in the bunkie. Most of my dinners were Mountain House brand dehydrated food requiring boiling water to cook. The kitchenette has a Keurig machine, but I brought instant coffee anyway. The ability to boil water kept me fed and caffeinated for most of my experience; just as long as I didn’t run the kettle and and another appliance at once, for example, due to circuit limitations (don’t take my word for it, Dreamers will tell you the more specific parameters and all required information for your stay).
I dialed someone on that phone. I don’t know if they heard me and I didn’t hear back in any way that I could immediately discern, but something interesting happened to me during this trip.
A clear night sky

My phone camera might not adequately capture that this was the best night sky I had seen in years. I live in the Lakeshore West district of Etobicoke. Even on a partly cloudy first night, I believe I saw more stars in the patches of occasionally visible sky than I would in a typically light polluted sky with some other objects in the way. As the week went by, and a storm pattern missed me only to hit my home area instead, clearer skies seemed more guaranteed each night.
But you’re waiting for me to explain what interesting thing happened, so let’s address that.
I used to tell people that when I write, I picture a movie in my head and I’m attempting to describe it. When I said that, I did not really understand that this would be more than a figure of speech: others can close their eyes and hold a mental picture. If I recalled high school Art I should have known better than to claim that I can. When my characters are visualized enough to be depicted in detail on a cover, you can thank my cover artists for challenging me to try and describe people I have never been able to see in any consistent form.
One exception is when I fall into a deep sleep. My dreams are wild and vivid multisensory experiences, some details of which might stay with me for years – and which also seem unscripted and rarely of practical use. When awake, though, I would describe most of my thoughts as dialogue and idea exploration. I once visited a hypnotist whose methods relied a fair deal on me closing my eyes and picturing something, and likewise, my being able to immediately fall into a deep sleep. I struggle with both. If anything they did managed to work, they sure didn’t let on.
But a really odd thing happened at Dreamers that had not happened for years prior, and only once since, suggesting how little conscious control I would have over the phenomenon.
One night I was followed into my bunkie by an unfortunate cloud of midges. The supplied bug zapper in that photo needed replacement (which occurred the next day, and I was all set for the rest of my visit), and I consoled myself with the fact that these didn’t do much but hang around lights, or buzz annoyingly close to my ear; I didn’t notice any bites. I turned off the main lamp, and tried switching on the lantern (a supplied amenity), placing at the farthest point from the bed (by the door) so it would attract them, and I managed to sleep.
The weird part was that upon first closing my eyes, after a second at most and not any time period in which I would expect to have fallen asleep, I automatically visualized the lamp above me and a gigantic swarm of midges descending toward my face. I opened my eyes to find that this wasn’t so.
In a second such weird apparition, “bananas” rendered in the limited graphic detail of an early-2000s gaming console were falling from the sky in clusters on a realistic street and people. It made not a lick of sense, but that’s what my mind produced for me to see.
This was bizarre. The most potent chemical I had ingested during my time there was caffeine, and I kept that no later than early afternoons for fear of being unable to sleep. Exactly once, and on a different day, I had drank a single beer or cooler. I stayed hydrated, and my dinners should not have been able to spoil for many years in their intact packaging. My Clif bar breakfasts and lunches showed no signs of having spoiled; had either of my food sources been compromised, I would have been far more ill and symptomatic than experiencing a couple of random visualizations.
I didn’t question it. Derek and Chandra needed me to rewrite their adventure, all was going well, and perhaps I had chosen a most excellent accommodation for reasons beyond my understanding.
Campfires

I built two campfires during my stay, which felt like exactly the number I needed. I have a basic knowledge of fire building, and it feels like one and a half to two decades since I have been involved in camping. I like the basic accomplishment of getting this thing going in a safe pit and determining how to keep it alive. I couldn’t care less if I’m elite at it; the point of this excursion was to strive at writing, not pretty much anything else.
I have camped a shallow ways into Algonquin Park, and with other family members before. I have had very few opportunities in recent years to build a campfire, or no particular reason even if the opportunity presented itself. Firewood on the grounds was half priced compared to what was available in the immediate area, and there was plenty of variety to it: twigs, pieces of thick bark, cut wood, deadwood covered in gobs of pine sap, and sprigs from the bushes that sizzle well with the tinder.
On another day, I also met a nice lady from Texas who felt like building fires and did perfectly well without any of my input. It was nice to have a good conversation with a stranger while I was pretending to “buckle down” and work constantly. In fact, the way I work, there must always be something to ease tension for me for when my attention span has tripped a limit. Such tasks just can’t sidetrack me more than my process requires: listening to playoff hockey in the evening, a small amount of single player gaming, or walking into Hepworth to understand the one restaurant it appeared I could walk to, and to peruse the offerings of the convenience store/post office/LCBO.
Ultimately, if I can get anything done at all, my process has worked. You might think that’s another low bar, but experience tells me it’s fair and practical in my personal context to measure some progress against none at all. I think of all the times that the process didn’t work, especially when I was much younger. I’m sure there’s more to it than I am describing.
Wildlife

Other than bugs, there was plenty of wildlife and nothing too concerning came close. Here we see the bunny that visited, while various birds were all around. Once the weather warmed up, some brown bats were flitting across the sky at dusk.
On one of my campfire nights, around 9:40pm I suddenly heard a cacophony of howls from out beyond the golf course that borders the writing farm. Wolves? Coyotes? Coywolves? I’m sure you get all three in the area, and I’m not expert enough to tell. They were distant, but heard. I’m sure they had themselves an excellent evening.
Summary
I felt that the glamping experience was as advertised. You are not at a likely pricier spot further north being served breakfast and theatre, nor are you completely isolated somewhere in Maine; this was a good entry-level experience for a self-directed writing retreat adequate to my need and very reasonable in price. Crucially, I could get there without needing a car, which is a lingering question with many other accommodations I had seen. I just needed to plan more carefully.
I did what I came to the farm to do. I found the bed very comfortable, the amenities as advertised, and the hosts very accommodating. The grounds workers were also friendly and helpful, able to answer a couple simple questions. It was not difficult to regulate the temperature in my bunkie. I may have done a few things differently:
- Verify transportation before booking. Unless I believe someone is going to book that bunkie within the few minutes it would take to make sure I can get there on my planned arrival day, and get home when I wish to, it pays to make sure (i.e. it cost me not to have made sure).
- Shave two to four days off my total trip (10 days including travel). Again, two of those days are the extras I introduced by mistake. Even without them, I felt that the magic had worn off a day or two before I left the campground; I had gotten started, I had my campfires. This is preferential, as the saying goes: “Your Mileage May Vary”.
- If I were going for a trip four days shorter, I might have considered using that budget on the suite accommodations if available. For full disclosure, I have irritable bowel symptoms and was worried about occupying the main washroom of the grounds when others might need it. However, that experience went surprisingly smooth and conflict-free. They have a couple of options available if you are not in the suite; in a pinch, I was all right with using the secondary/outhouse style washroom.
As for the project, I finished my first rewrite draft late last week and began to edit the manuscript.