Hedgebrook's gift of solitude

Life's lessons, traumas endured by a nation, triumphs in our personal lives — these are all part of what make the stories we feel compelled to tell.

But writing is a solitary pursuit. Those who do it know how to find solitude in a crowded newsroom, classroom or office building. Happily, there are also places that provide quiet so we can find the words.

One is Hedgebrook, a writers retreat for women on Whidbey Island. Be forewarned, the distance toHedgebrook is a lot farther than the 15-minute ferry ride across Puget Sound. Much of it must be traversed in your mind.

Hedgebrook is the answer to writer Virginia Woolf's rhetorical query about what women could produce if they had time free of obligation and, as importantly, a private space.

In "A Room of One's Own," Woolf created Judith, the fictitious sibling of William Shakespeare, a bright woman who would have penned sonnets and plays to rival her brother's had she not been confined by gender to rinsing diapers and cooking meals.

Washing machines clean the diapers and meals are often takeout, yet many of us today still struggle to add our 2 cents to the story of our times. In 1988, philanthropist and third-generation Seattleite Nancy Nordhoff developed Hedgebrook as a response.

Six writers at a time are housed in six cottages designed by an Amish-influenced architect and purposely nestled amid woods and meadows for maximum privacy.

There is no charge for anything. Rotating chefs offer sustenance. Lunches consisting of freshly picked salads are delivered in cloth-covered baskets to the door of each cottage. Dinners are communal affairs around a long farm table, a welcoming sight to writers emerging from a day of cocooning. Afterward, writers read their work aloud in an adjacent sitting room warmed by a pot-bellied stove.

I received a residency to Hedgebrook some years ago and arrived armed for 30 days of solitude with books, writing pens, pads and music.

Traveling along Whidbey Island, I was so enthralled by the rolling green landscape, grazing horses, goats and more-exotic animals, that I almost missed the small calligraphic sign that read "Hedgebrook Farm." Up the expanse of lawn sat a French country-style stone farmhouse.

My cottage was named Willow and the smooth wood floors and stained glass windows embraced me. I met a writer in Owl cottage, and deep into the night I would see her lights through the trees as she toiled to cram the end of one novel and outlines of a new one into her 60-day stay. She didn't talk on Mondays, to conserve her creative energy. I don't think it was a coincidence that her novels depicted characters from Earth and a few other planets.

A deep-sea photographer from Hawaii stayed in the cottage just across from mine but invisible through the thicket of trees. Having taken the most spectacular and fearless pictures of Mount Kilauea spewing lava and ash, she spent her days writing prose to accompany the pictures.

And for me? The splendor was terrifying. I mostly sat in the window seat of my cottage and napped, read and stared into the yawning space. At night I cranked up jazz and classical music to drown out the sound of yipping coyotes and echoing loneliness.

If I were like the writer Annie Dillard and could lose myself in words so completely I let the houseplants die and rejected all visitors, Hedgebrook would not be necessary.

No, it still would. Women understand that even when they try to tune out the world, it simply waits just outside their window.

In "The Writing Life," Dillard recounted the story of a man who asked where she found the time to write books. "I understand you're married," he noted. "(And) you have to have a garden; you have to entertain."

Dillard dismissed the man as a fool. But his assumptions about the burdens of obligation are true enough that Hedgebrook stands as a gift for those of us who sometimes need a room of their own.

Once a year, I return to Hedgebrook to give back in some way — unfortunately, not with the money such a nonprofit sorely needs, but typically with invigorating labor. This past weekend, I went up to help clear trails and prune back encroaching vegetation. An unfortunate encounter with a nest of stinging nettles convinced me to approach my task as more than a day of gardening.

Clearing land means sawing tree limbs, pulling up weeds and too-prolific plants, and making sure nature and buildings respect each other's space. It takes energy and renews it.

The great thing about Hedgebrook is the absence of pressure of any kind. There is only a message, repeated over and over in words and deeds: Your voice matters. Find the words.

Lynne K. Varner's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is seattletimes.com">lvarner@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to Opinion at seattletimes.com