alternative hippopotamus

I hope this an interesting anecdote. It concerns events that occurred between September 1998 and May 2001, when I stopped participating in “Country Retreat.” Why I did so is the story for another day.

A friend of mine had put together a series of extraordinary weekends at his home in New Ipswich, NH. Once a month about 20 of us would gather, and participate in what was called “Country Retreat,” or CR for short.

The basic premise was that we would make a very specific aim, or really a series of specific aims that would test our abilities to work together as a group. The aims we set were always of a practical nature: building new rooms, or planting a garden, or building a tree fort, things along those lines. Part of the group labored at putting together lavish banquets (my humble contribution was adding international dishes), part of us would do the construction, and then we’d talk about what had happened in the process. Sunday afternoons were usually devoted to discussing something someone had read recently, and I recall everything from Shakespeare to Dave Barry. Though, if the work had gone badly, we would keep the discussion short, try to learn from our experiences thus far, and complete our aims for the weekend.

All of us went into these weekends knowing that it would be extraordinarily difficult. We would be tested to our physical limits, usually with little or no sleep, and we’d get snippy with each other. Still, we wanted the best for each other in the process. Yelling at someone, or being yelled at, is often an act of kindness.

As an example I remember a Saturday afternoon when we were working on laying floorboard in the guest bedroom. If we didn’t get it finished, that meant we’d have no where to sleep Saturday night.

You have to understand that none of us had ever laid flooring before. And, all of us had been up since Friday night, and were not exactly on our best behavior. So, we spent an hour or so stumbling around trying to get how the machines worked, and how the tongue went into the groove of the next board, and got some sense of measuring the next board, while another person was nailing in the last one.

At this point, I was in as bad shape as you can imagine, and was starting to wear out my welcome. When I had sawed off about 4 boards too short, and was trying to make an awkward joke about it, some were looking at me like I might be the centerpiece for the Sunday brunch meal.

Then R, one of the most sensible members of the group called for a stop to all this, and we gathered for a quick discussion.

“Let’s take a look at where we are right now,” he said.
We looked, knowing we were in the middle of a disaster.
“I want 4 people,” he said, and 4 of us raised our hands, including me. R was one of those people who I looked up to tremendously, and I didn’t want to disappoint him.
“Good,” he said, “the rest of you should go help with dinner.” I remember feeling very glad that I was part of this. Even though I believed I wasn’t up to the task, R trusted me.
“In the next 45 minutes, we’re going to finish laying the floor for this room. Who’s with me?”

This was one of the strangest moments of my life. There was no way that the 4 of us could lay the flooring for the room in 45 minutes. It was impossible. He might as well of said: “In the next 45 minutes we’re going to swim the English Channel. And we’re going to do it without getting wet. Meanwhile, one of you is going to capture a unicorn.”

At the same time, I knew that his belief that it was possible was more powerful than my disbelief. All of us said “Yes, we can do it.”

What happened next was a blur of continuous motion. We sawed, laid hammered, nailed, pushed poked. The air was full of sawdust, sweat, and intense concentration. In less than 45 minutes, we had finished flooring a room that would have taken each of us individually a lifetime.

We toasted each other afterwards and had the best evening of our lives. Our bodies were broke, sore, and I couldn’t walk at all, but I had tasted something I had never experienced before.

Our discussion on Sunday was mostly about that experience. And none of us could really explain what happened. Someone who wasn’t there listened to us and reflected: “From what you say, you believed in someone’s vision.”