Why I love tiny one day retreats with train and alps?
In short: it's a great time to write, read, enjoy landscapes and come back to a photography practice. It's a time of calm solo presence that recharges batteries.
At the time of writing this, I'm in a train coming back from Andermatt in direction to Basel where we live at the moment. Andermatt is a village in the middle of the alps at more than 1400 meters.
This year whenever I notice there is a day where there are no courses, no child care and no workshops I block that day in my calendar as a tiny solo day off.
In such days, I like to take the train and visit a village in the Swiss alps. Get lunch there, and come back home. When packing I make sure to not take my laptop, I take some stuff to read, my camera and my Remarkable II tablet to write. As I don't have anymore a smartphone this creates a very relaxing day of writing, reading, taking pictures and just looking at the landscapes.
There are a few things that make these tiny retreat days special for me:
Back to photography for pleasure
When I was studying at ECAL, an art school here in Switzerland, I started a project of photos of train stations and landscapes taken from trains. It was a great project as I just randomly took trains and discovered new places. I got out in a random train station and tried to find something to take in photo.
For many years I haven't done much photography outside of family pictures. So now being back in trains and train stations with a camera brings me back to this project.
That type of photography makes you really mindful of all the objects, landscapes, textures that are around you. And that makes for both a very relaxing moment, yet with a creative output.
Here are some of these photos from today's retreat:
Time to read and write
I write nearly everyday, and such a day off is the occasion to write a bit more. Write to clear my head, write to share something.
And it's also a time where I can read for hours, finish a book or start a book that I didn't feel like starting yet.
In the first tiny retreat I did like this, I basically read for 6 to 8 hours a book that was difficult to finish otherwise.
Why I'll continue
When I'm not in teacher, coach, facilitator mode, I'm in dad mode. Such retreats are the moment where I'm really in a solo mode, something that for someone who feels like an introvert really helps to recharge the batteries.
It helps me also later as I can remember that I had time just for myself, so I can then be fully present for others and with others.
As today I had really a lot of fun with the photos, I think that will be a tiny creative project that I'll continue just for fun.
This article was written on a refurbished Remarkable II tablet with a type folio cover. The illustration was made drawn by hand on the same tablet.
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