It’s 6 AM.
A few early risers get their morning coffee, and someone plays the banjo before the day begins the Words in the Hills retreat. Writers come here to Camp Oty'Okwa in Hocking Hills to work on their music, songwriting, stories, and poems.
Megan Bee, the creator of the retreat, said the Appalachian hills and caves at the camp are a special place.
"It's 700 acres of privately owned land," Bee said. "And there's just some really unique rock features and recessed caves that are only accessible to people who are using that property."
Bee worked as a camp counselor at Camp Oty'Okwa for ten years, helping run adult and children’s programs.
"And when I took everyone out for the morning hike one day, and I asked everyone to look at one little one-foot patch of soil and take a miniature hike with their magnifying lens and really get in there." She said, "and then I sat down and did it too, and realized how rare it is and how slowing down is so important."
I think that as writers, the more we notice our environment, the more we can notice each other, spend time in observation, and be grounded in ourselves.Megan Bee
Bee said observations of her world helped her to write songs.
"I was writing songs in my head all through high school. I had a truck that didn't have a radio, and I would make up songs as I drove." Bee said, "I thought everybody probably does that. And then, once I started learning guitar, I just suddenly was more comfortable sharing. I had this vehicle to share the songs I made up in my head."
Many of Bee’s songs reflect her love of nature. She shared some of her lyrics.
"I'm trying to be quiet. I'm trying to listen. Trying to figure out what I've been missing," she sang. "I listen for the thunder. I listen for the night bird. I listen for a melody. And listen for the right words."
Bee started going to writers’ workshops to improve her songs. She said she didn’t have to wait for inspiration to strike when she found her community.
Then, Bee created this writing retreat tailored to her passions—nature, music, and collaboration.
"I had wanted something like this to exist," Bee said. "When I couldn't find it, I decided to create it. And when people showed up, they said, 'I’ve been looking for something like this.'"
Kari Gunter-Seymour, the current Ohio Poet Laureate, was a speaker at this year’s retreat. Her poems evoke a sense of place, like the Hocking Hills region.
"You get out in a place like that, and your feet and your legs feel so good walking on the ground that gives as opposed to cement that is just hard, hard, hard to walk on. " Gunter-Seymour said, "And inevitably, I always sit down somewhere, and that means my whole body is engaged in touching the earth. And then how can you not write"?
Caitlin Kraus, a singer-songwriter and mental health therapist from Athens, attended this year’s retreat. She said Words in the Hills offers a kind of eco-therapy.
"So to be around nature, art has been a part of it. I think that, again, really cultivates like a playful spirit, a creative spirit that many adults stray away from." Kraus said, "That can be healing and therapeutic for whatever somebody might be going through."
One participant came up to Bee on the last evening of this year's retreat to thank her.
"One of the people in our group shared that they had never called themselves a writer and now felt like they could," she said.
Bee said she hoped to hold more writers' retreats in the future.
This story was produced at the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO.
