The Hundredth Hill
I’m preparing to spend a week-long writing residency in the hills outside Bloomington, Indiana. The location is an artist’s residency known as The Hundredth Hill. The facility is the dream-child of two musician-magicians, Krista Detor and David Weber. (If you don’t know singer-songwriter Krista’s music, you’re missing the gift beautiful stories told in a glorious voice. Hie thee to thy streaming channel immediately.)
Last year, I attended my first residency at The Hundredth Hill. In trying to capture a sense of having found one of those rare spiritual homes, I wrote the following:
Say you enter an elevator in a big old hotel and see that the floor numbers jump from twelve to fourteen. The thirteenth floor, by name, isn’t there, an absence bowing to superstitions for the number on which we center our stories of misfortune.
Outside the hotel, you can count the rows of windows. A thirteenth floor is clearly there for the counting—if you choose to count it. Whether or not a place exists, whatever reality it may hold, depends on the stories you decide to tell about that place. Stories necessitate location. The first question you ask upon waking is not “Who am I?” but “Where am I?” Place is where your story roots its sense of meaning.
To find your meaning you have to explore your story. That will require some adventuring, adventuring that may feel, at times, more like trials. You will mistake these trials as proof of your unworthiness. These trials prove only that you’re moving in the correct direction. Your adventures serve to give your story its shape.
You journey on until the journey is all you know. You give up your expectations, even the hope of arrival.
That’s when you arrive.
Along the way, your mind might question the value of your wandering. That’s what the mind does—it creates questions. Your heart needs no compass, for the heart has always known where it wants to be. Your heart waits only for a state of recognition to emerge. A state of home.
All the same, prepare to feel lost—even though your lostness is an illusion. You are forever right where you’re supposed to be. How could you be anywhere else? You are forging your own path. You cannot follow the path of someone else and end up were you want to go.
You journey on until the journey is all you know. You give up your expectations, even the hope of arrival.
That’s when you arrive.
Arrive where? I can’t say where your journey will find its end, but your heart will recognize the place. You always recognize your home. There you will tell your stories to others who have also traveled long distances, felt vulnerable and lost, surrendered their hoped-for outcomes. Those stories will vary wildly in their details, but you’ll say to each storyteller, “I’ve been there, too.” Everyone’s journey carried the precise lessons they needed. Write their journeys in your notebooks. They need remembering. We all need remembering.
When asked how you arrived here, you tell your story. With the sun sinking into night and revealing constellations, you say, “I counted rows of windows on big old hotels. I counted the roads that led away from where I stood. I counted the stars, the stones, the clouds, and the clock-like beats of my heart. I counted each step until I ran out of numbers. I tallied all those steps, and felt I’d gone nowhere. At last, I looked beyond my feet into a horizon forever on the threshold of light. I saw the world. That’s when I started counting the hills and chose one.”
January 23, 2022
Writing Exercise
Where are your spiritual writing homes? Describe them in words or find pictures that capture their essence. Do you see patterns in the places where you no longer feel lost and it’s safe to say what needs saying? Write a journey story about what it took you to find one of those places. Or write a story about the journey you imagine you must take, internally or externally, to get to that place you hope to find. Think of what adventures you might encounter along the way.
Photo by Karen