From The Innkeepers

On Returning to Yourself

This month marks the one year anniversary of us taking over as the next generation of keepers of the Rustic Gate. It has been a truly remarkable year of change. We are beginning to feel settled into our new town and our new roles as business owners, innkeepers, and stewards of this magical property.

It took less than six months for me to realize the power this space holds for each guest that passes through the gates. I posted a picture of our walking labyrinth in January. The snow had melted enough to make the design of the labyrinth visible, while the path inside the labyrinth was still blanketed in white. In the post, I described a few ways one can approach walking the labyrinth, explaining that there is no one right way. I ended with the line “The labyrinth simply invites you to meet yourself.” When I wrote that line, I realized that the invitation is true of this whole place. And that’s no accident.

There is a poem painted on the dining room wall of the inn, “Love After Love” by Derek Walcott. The first few lines of the poem read:

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.

I came to know this poem intimately, because I’m the one who painted the five by seven foot version of it on the wall, way back when I was a new teacher with transparency sheets and an overhead projector. My aunt Marcia, knowing I had a little bit of artistic talent (at least enough to be able to color inside the lines) asked me if I’d be willing to take on this project, and I, having a false sense of confidence from having watched way too many episodes of Trading Spaces, agreed. It was a bigger challenge than I thought, and I spent many hours over several weekends on a summer vacation in my 20s tracing and filling in every letter and line of that poem with forest green paint, not knowing that this would be my home twenty two years later. And now, not only do we get to live here, but we get to be the ones who welcome others and say, “Sit here. Eat,” and give them the opportunity to get reacquainted with the stranger that is themselves.

Let’s talk about the eat part for a minute. I’m not sure I can do the food that we serve here justice, but I will try. And by “we” I mean Ryan and Aaron. Both of them spent decades in fast paced, stressful, physically intense food service jobs. Here, they are finally able to work in an environment where they can use their cooking skills and creativity to create food they are proud of and interact with the people they are making it for. For first-time guests, the food is one of the most pleasant surprises. Meals are lovingly scratch-made from as many local and organic ingredients as they can find. Ryan still uses a tradition our aunt Sharon started, a simple soup-and-sandwich or soup-and-salad arrival meal to help guests settle in. He’ll tell you where all the vegetables came from (an Amish farm stand, our neighbor Annie’s farm, or our own garden) and sometimes what role a dish plays in the whole meal: “This fresh tomato salsa adds that acid piece to complement the richness of the salmon and the coconut rice.”

I don’t know how to say it other than these guys nerd out in the kitchen constantly, and I love to see it. They experiment, tweak, and fuss over details that people who don’t cook would never even notice. But what you do notice is the delicious flavors, the brightness of fresh herbs, and the love that they clearly put into every dish. Applause from the dining table is common, and a guest at my last writing retreat commented that she wanted to record them talking about the food, because it is so clearly a labor of love. I’m so happy for my brother and my husband. They finally get to return to their love for cooking in a place and at a pace that allows them to play and be creative.

This place and its pace provides the same opportunity for so many of our guests. I have been in awe at the creativity I have seen here this year. The quilters! Such beautiful work in so many colors and patterns. The mathematical engineering of original designs, the loving assembly of harmonizing fabrics, the meticulous stitching of tiny pieces to create a breathtaking whole. I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t know much about quilting before I got here, but what I know now is that it is an inspiring art. And the painters! Where do these people come from who are able to pick up a paint brush and in a few wisps capture the essence of the nature around here? And the writers! Such loving labor over words just to capture truths that help us recognize ourselves. It is amazing how many people have secret creative gifts. It’s heartening to be reminded that in mundane places like the grocery store and the DMV, jewelry makers, knitters, and fiber artists; poets, novelists, and essayists; painters, musicians, and culinary artists regularly walk amongst us.

What I admire so much about the people who gather here to make art is that they have made the commitment to spend time with the creative part of themselves. For so many creatives, this is not an easy thing to do. Dedicating time to be creative can feel daunting, vulnerable, and lonely. This idea has been on my mind, especially after Aaron and I went to our first concert of the year this month. We saw Brandi Carlile play an unforgettable show at the new outdoor amphitheater in Grand Rapids. I’ve been a Brandi Carlile fan for years, but it took me showing Aaron her cover of Alanis Morissette’s “Uninvited” at the Newport Folk Festival to convince him to come along. (If you haven’t seen it, you must look it up. Especially if you are a perimenopausal woman–You will have a new anthem, I promise!) Brandi Carlile’s most recent album is called “Returning to Myself” and the title track has been running through my head since the album was released last fall. It has in a sense been the soundtrack to my first year of “retirement,” and the lyrics hit at what the inn has offered me and what it offers to our guests. In the first part of the song, the chorus ends with the lines: “Returning to myself is such a lonely thing to do / But it’s the only thing to do.” She reminds us that in certain seasons of our life, we have to come back to ourselves, whether we want to or not. At the end of the song, she explains the payoff. “Returning to myself is just returning me to you / And that’s the only thing I want to do.” This is a much more poetic way to say, “Put your own oxygen mask on first.” And for so many of us, taking time to be with ourselves and to express our creativity is the only way we are going to be able to give our best to others.

In that same concert, she also sang Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors,” explaining that she had been troubled to hear Dolly say that her butterfly wings were getting tired. Two days later, Dolly Parton died. Since then, I’ve spent more time than I’m willing to admit watching video clips of Dolly unapologetically being Dolly in all of her forms: songbird, storyteller, actress, comedian, humanitarian. I found out that she routinely woke up at 3 am to give herself quiet time to do her spiritual work, write songs, and plan creative projects. Dolly was the queen of returning to herself, and she did so every morning. I like to think it was because of this ritual that she was such a talented artist and that the self she shared with us was so bright, loving, and beautiful.

In the grand scheme of things, the Inn at the Rustic Gate is a much more humble gift, but this is our contribution to the world. We hope we can offer a place where you can return to yourself in order to access your creative spirit or find the calm at your center. And even if you can’t pass through our gates anytime soon, we hope you carve out some time and a little place of your own where you can let yourself create, play, and love again the stranger that is yourself.