As We Wander

This piece was originally written in May 2022 and not all information is up to date. Among other details, the treehouse has been completed.

The visit was invited, but the enthusiasm genuine.

I set out from Indianapolis on a drizzly afternoon, headed south to the Lost River Hostel to rest and decompress. Vibrant greens and yellows stand out against the rain-darkened stone of rocky outcrops by the road as I reach the hills of southern Indiana. The world is bright, as if to defy the rain; the fallow fields and meadows are all painted in goldenrod.

As I got closer, the GPS routed me through backroads that I later found out were unnecessary as the hostel was only a couple minutes outside of West Baden, but it was a nice way to set the scene for some time in the woods.

When I arrived, I was shown to the Water Room, one of the 8 guest rooms currently available. The rooms on the bottom floor is named for the seasons, the upper level for the classical elements: wind, water, earth, and fire. The room consisted of a soft bed, a shelf, a fan and an electrical outlet; no televisions in sight to spew their messages to consume.

I explored for a few hours, walking along dirt trails through the woods awash with birdsong and paths of reclaimed brick, following wooden markers to various sites throughout the property including a lagoon, a young hedge maze called the Labyrinth, gardens, a chicken coop and a treehouse-in-progress, until I heard the clang of a bell and made my way back to meet the other guests and residents for communal dinner. We snacked on foraged sorrell that tasted like sweet grapes while we waited for everyone to gather. We all shared reasons for gratitude, then chowed down on taco soup topped with chives from the garden. Deer browsed outside as we ate.

After dinner, the rain had largely stopped and I went back out to lay on the damp dock in the lagoon in the woods to wait for sunset, watching the clouds scud across the sky as bats began to swoop overhead. Fireflies made the trees glisten like gypsum crystals.

In the morning the group reconvened after breakfast and everyone declared their specific ambitions for the day; mine was to speak with everyone and to see the different work that would be put in. One group went to work in the garden and another headed for the treehouse. I could hear woodpeckers drumming for their meals as I went first to join the gardeners. On the path I saw one of my companions at the hostel that I had met the previous night at dinner and asked them how long they had been there.

“I came last Thursday,” was the response. “Meant to stay one night, and I’ve been here ever since.”

At the garden, I was invited to do as much or as little as I wanted. I helped to weed the garden for a while, pulling up grasses that were trying to take over the plot. We all stopped together to watch a grub, disturbed by one of us, crawl to a new shady spot elsewhere. Ants boiled up from another area and were left equally undisturbed.

Eventually, my hands caked in dirt, I left to go check on the treehouse project. When I arrived, several people were working on nailing up shingles that had been procured from the Amish. It was explained to me that the treehouse was made to split into 5 pieces, that would then be hoisted individually into the tree and reassembled.

I stopped to talk to Scott Wheeler, the owner of the hostel, before I left and told him that he has a really cool place. He grinned.

“The cool place is just here as bait to lure in the cool people. That’s the real point of this.”

As everybody hugged me goodbye and at every other moment, I felt the joy and the welcome that he and the rest of the group have created.