Creative Rest: Spring Retreat

A Retreat for Artists to Remember Their Wild Nature

Your creative spirit isn't tired—it's overstimulated, overthinking, performing.

In a world that measures your worth by output, we're inviting you to step into a different rhythm. No expectations. No critique. No performance. Just you, the land, and permission to create from pure play.

Creative Rest is designed for artists of any medium who need to get out of their heads and back into their bodies, back into wonder, back into the kind of unstructured curiosity that feeds real creative work.

Bring your sketchbook, your pen and paper, or nothing at all. Let the forest be your studio. Let rest be your practice. Let yourself be inspired by all the beauty that nature has to offer.

Why Rest Matters for Creativity

The myth of the tortured artist has it backwards. Creativity doesn't come from grinding or forcing. It comes from space, from play, from allowing your nervous system to settle enough that inspiration can actually find you.

When we're constantly producing, we're pulling from an empty well. Rest isn't the absence of work—it's how we refill. It's how the subconscious does its magic. It's how connections form, ideas germinate, and the spark returns.

Here, you'll practice a different kind of making: creation without agenda, expression without judgment, art as exploration rather than destination. This is how artists have worked for millennia—in rhythm with the seasons, in conversation with the earth, with time to wander and wonder before the work begins.

Rest is radical. Rest is generative. Rest is where your best work begins.

What to Expect

Over three days and two nights, you'll be held by 54 acres of forest, river, and meadow. This isn't a workshop where you'll be taught technique or expected to produce finished pieces. This is an invitation to play, to experiment, to let creativity move through you without pressure or product.

You'll gather in circle with fellow artists who understand the particular exhaustion of always being "on." You'll move your body, quiet your mind, and make things just for the joy of making. You'll collect materials from the forest floor. You'll work with your hands. You'll remember what drew you to art in the first place—before deadlines, before critique, before the pressure to perform.

There's no agenda here except to rest, reconnect, and create from a place of fullness rather than depletion.

The Rhythm of the Retreat

Friday Evening

5:00 PM — Arrive and settle into your room at BlackHouse. Each space has its own character and a private deck for quiet reflection.

6:30 PM — Opening circle around the fire. We'll share intentions, release expectations, and begin the work of slowing down.

7:30 PM — Dinner together. Nourishing, seasonal food prepared with care. This is the beginning of being fed—literally and metaphorically.

9:00 PM — Evening wander or sauna session. Let your body begin to unwind. Stargaze. Listen to the river. Do nothing at all.

Saturday

8:00 AM — Morning movement and yoga. Gentle, grounding practice to reconnect with your body and breath.

9:30 AM — Breakfast in the meadow. Coffee, tea, and slow morning conversation.

10:30 AM — Forest therapy walk. We'll move slowly through the land, noticing textures, colors, light. Gather natural materials if you're called to—bark, stones, moss, feathers. No phones. Just presence.

12:30 PM — Lunch and rest. Time to nap, journal, swim in the salt water pool, or simply be.

2:30 PM — Creative play session: Making with natural materials. Work with what the forest has offered—assemble, arrange, build, create ephemeral art. No rules, no finished product required. Just hands, materials, and curiosity.

4:30 PM — Free time to wander and wonder. Explore the 54 acres. Sketch by the river. Write in your journal. Nap in a hammock. Follow your own rhythm.

6:30 PM — Dinner by the fire. Stories, laughter, and the kind of conversation that happens when people feel safe enough to be honest.

8:30 PM — Optional evening creative session: Art by candlelight. Bring your sketchbook, your notebook, your materials—or just watch the fire and rest. Create if inspiration strikes. Rest if it doesn't. Both are welcome here.

Sunday Morning

8:00 AM — Early Bird breakfast 

9:30 AM — Movement and Breathwork to welcome the day

10:30 AM — Creative play session: Intuitive making. Return to your materials or explore new ones. Collage, sketch, build, write—whatever wants to emerge. We'll create together in shared space, each following our own inspiration.

12:00 PM — Brunch and closing circle. We'll gather to reflect, share, and honor what's shifted. Not what you've made, but how it felt to make it. Not what you produced, but what you remembered.

1:00 PM — Farewells. Depart when you're ready, carrying this slowness back into your life.

What's Included

• Two nights in a unique container suite with private deck
• All meals—seasonal, locally sourced, prepared with intention
• Guided forest therapy experience
• Yoga and movement sessions
• Creative play workshops with natural and art materials provided
• Access to salt water pool, wood-fired sauna, trails, fire pits, and gathering spaces
• Time. Space. Permission to rest.

What to Bring

Your creative tools if you'd like them—sketchbook, pens, watercolors, a camera, a journal. Or bring nothing and work only with what the forest provides. Comfortable clothes for moving and getting a little dirty. An open heart. A willingness to play.

Who This Is For

This retreat is for artists, makers, and creatives of all kinds—painters, writers, photographers, musicians, designers, crafters, anyone who creates and needs a reset. You don't need to be a professional. You don't need to be "good enough." You just need to be tired of performing and ready to remember why you make things in the first place.

This is for anyone who's forgotten how to create without judgment. For anyone who needs permission to rest without guilt. For anyone who's ready to step off the treadmill of productivity and back into the wild rhythm of real creative work.

Investment

$1000 per person for 3 days and two nights - all inclusive (plus tax)

We offer sliding scale pricing and scholarships for artists facing financial barriers. Your economic situation should never keep you from accessing rest and nature. Reach out if you need support—we'll work it out together.

Your Wild Nature Is Waiting

The land is here. The space is ready. The only thing missing is you.

Nature is wild, complex, and beautifully untamed—just like your creativity. Come remember yours.

WHAT'S INCLUDED IN YOUR PRIVATE SANCTUARY

Each guest enjoys a private room in our one-of-a-kind shipping container home. These cozy, thoughtfully designed spaces are built for deep rest and gentle awakening:Private, cozy container room for one night

• All meals: arrival snack, lunch, dinner, early breakfast (optional), and brunch
• Optional energizing yoga class (Saturday)
• Optional morning yoga class (Sunday)
• Elemental care package: wood-burning sauna and steam room
• Guided Forest Therapy walk
• Tour of the 54-acre property
• Access to multiple fire pits and lounge areas
• Complete freedom to wander, explore, create, or simply be
• The most alive you've felt in years
• Connection to the wisdom of spring and the power of presence

Your own quiet cocoon. Your own peaceful haven. Your own place to surrender completely.

THE POWER OF PRESENCE

One of the most profound gifts of spring is presence. In the ForRest Retreat, you're invited to experience the medicine of witnessing—to let go of constant planning and drop into a deeper noticing. The spring forest is your teacher here, showing you that in attentiveness, everything essential is revealed.

Let the aliveness wash over you. Let it fill you. Let it teach you what words cannot.

THE BENEFITS OF EMERGENCE

When you truly allow emergence, you:

• Restore vitality and rekindle creative energy
• Release stagnation and welcome flow
• Clear mental fog and enhance clarity
• Reconnect with inspiration and purpose
• Access joy and possibility that come with new beginnings
• Realign with your body's natural rhythms
• Remember that you are part of nature, not separate from it

Emergence is not a luxury. It is a biological necessity. It is how we grow, how we create, how we step into our fullness.

Let yourself receive these gifts. Let yourself bloom. Let yourself become.

THE IMPORTANCE OF EMERGENCE

We live in a time that treats growth as something to force, control, or perform. But nature shows us a different truth: emergence is the natural, gentle continuation of rest. Seeds emerge from winter soil when the time is right. Wildflowers push through the earth in their own perfect timing. Trees emerge from dormancy, softly sending their energy upward into tender buds.

You are as wild as the forest. You, too, need seasons of gentle, patient emergence.

This retreat is your permission slip to honor that truth.

Give yourself this gift. Give yourself permission. Give yourself the soft renewal you've been craving.

A FINAL INVITATION

A FINAL INVITATION

The forest awakens in spring for a reason. The animals emerge. The trees bud. The earth blooms.

And so can you.

Come emerge with us. Come remember that renewal is your birthright. Come awaken your wild spirit. Come experience the profound medicine of spring's unfolding.

Come home to your wild nature.

Let yourself unfold. Let yourself bloom. Let yourself rise.

You are as wild as the forest. You deserve to emerge.

"Wild Nature Retreats are designed to help you remember you are nature. Through guided Forest Therapy, art, play, and rest, the magic is revealed."

ForREST - Where doing nothing is doing everything.